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SHAKESPEARE 

AS A DRAMATIC THINKER 



A POPULAR ILLUSTRATION OF 

FICTION AS THE EXPERIMENTAL SIDE 
OF PHILOSOPHY 



BY 
RICHARD G. MOULTON, M.A. (Camb.), Ph.D. (Penna.) 

PROFESSOR OF LITERARY THEORY AND INTERPRETATION IN THE UNIVERSITY 

OF CHICAGO, UNIVERSITY EXTENSION LECTURER IN LITERATURE 

(ENGLAND AND AMERICA) 

AUTHOR OF " SHAKESPEARE AS A DRAMATIC ARTIST," " THE ANCIENT 

CLASSICAL DRAMA," ETC., EDITOR OF "THE MODERN 

READER'S bible" 



NeiD gotk 
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD. 
192 1 

All rights r£Sirv£d 



TT(3007 

nil 



Copyright, 1903, 1907, 
By the MACMILLAN COMPANY. 



Set up and electrotyped. Published June, 1903, 






Norwood Press 

J. S. Gushing & Co. — Berivick & Smith Co. 

Norivoody Mass.y U.S.A. 



PREFACE 

The present work is supplementary to my former book, 
Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist, originally published (by the 
Clarendon Press, Oxford) in 1885, and now (third edition, 1893) 
in extensive use amongst private readers and in schools and 
universities. It illustrates an entirely different view point of 
literary study. Necessarily, however, two books treating the 
same author must have some points in common. Where this 
is the case, I have usually in the present work given the briefest 
treatment consistent with clearness, the reader being referred 
by footnotes to the other book for fuller discussion. 

In what is intended primarily for the general reader I have 
wished to exclude technical discussion from the text. Believing, 
however, that precise analysis of structure is the best founda- 
tion for the fullest appreciation of literary beauty, I have added 
an Appendix, which gives formal schemes of plot for each of 
the Shakespearean plays. By this combination of general dis- 
cussion in the text with formal analysis in the Appendix I have 
tried to make what may serve as a text-book of Shakespeare for 
students of literary clubs or scholastic institutions. 

This work is a re-issue of the book published four years ago 
under the title The Moral System of Shakespeare. I have reason 
to believe that that title has been misunderstood, and, in spite 
of my disclaimer, has created an expectation of systematization in 
what was really a protest against the over-systematization of 
others. The Introduction has been entirely re-written, so as 
to make the argument clearer. Apart from this, there has been 
no change, except occasional slight alterations of phraseology. 

RICHARD G. MOULTON. 
April, 1907. 



CONTENTS 

INTRODUCTION 



PAGE 

What is implied in "The Moral System of Shakespeare" . i 



BOOK I 

Root Ideas of Shakespeare's Moral System 

CHAPTER 

I. Heroism and Moral Balance : The first four Histories . . 13 

II. Wrong and Retribution : The second four Histories ... 33 

III. Innocence and Pathos : The Tragedy of A'<7W(?o a«df _/«/»<?/ . 46 

IV. Wrong and Restoration : The Comedies of Winter's Tale and 

Cymbeline 65 

V. The Life Without and the Life Within : The Mask-Tragedy of 

Henry the Eighth 89 

BOOK II 

Shakespeare's World in its Moral Complexity 

VI. The Outer and Inner in Application to Roman Life , . .Ill 

VII. Moral Problems Dramatised 141 

VIII. Comedy as Life in Equilibrium 158 

IX. Tragedy as Equilibrium Overthrown 185 

X. The Moral Significance of Humour 195 

vii 



Vlll CONTENTS 



BOOK III 

The Forces of Life in Shakespeare's Moral World 

CHAPTER PAGE 

XI. Personality and its Dramatic Expression in Intrigue and Irony . 209 

XII. The Momentum of Character and the Sway of Circumstance . 242 

XIII. The Pendulum of History 269 

XIV. Supernatural Agency in Shakespeare's Moral World . . . 297 
XV. Moral Accident and Overruling Providence . . . • 311 



APPENDIX 

Plot Schemes of Shakespearean Dramas 327 

Index to the Plays 375 

General Index ...,.••»... 376. 



SHAKESPEARE 
AS A DRAMATIC THINKER 



INTRODUCTION 

THE DRAMATIC PRESENTATION OF THOUGHT 

Shakespeare is supreme as a dramatist : what is he as a thinker ? 
and what is his philosophy of hfe and the universe? This is the 
inquiry proposed in the present work. 

The inquiry is in no way affected by the questions which modern 
analysis has raised in reference to the authorship of the plays. 
In the earlier dramas collaboration has been shown to obtain to a 
large extent ; Shakespeare's part in the collaboration in some cases 
seems to have been small ; and in some cases he seems to have 
worked over a previous play. Even a later play, the masterpiece of 
Henry the Eighth, has been traced to joint authorship ; with the 
curious result that the famous passages of that poem, which we 
learned by heart at school, and recited as among the choicest 
Shakespearean gems, must all be attributed to Fletcher. Besides 
these results of orthodox Shakespearean scholarship, a certain 
type of mind, more sensitive to paradox than to evidence, is fasci- 
nated with the conviction that the dramas in question were the 
work of Bacon. But the authorship with which we are here 
concerned is the authorship actually at the back of the plays, 
whether that authorship be proved eventually to be individual 
or collective, and whether the individuality hails from Stratford 
on Avon or from the Inns of Court. ' Shakespeare ' is simply a 
convenient name for a well-known collection of plays : the think- 
ing impHed in the content of these plays, however it may have 
got there, is here credited to Shakespeare. 

No doubt there is to be found, more among men of affairs than 
among literary students, a certain scepticism as to the value of 
such inquiry as is here proposed. Plays, it is urged, are a form 



2 INTRODUCTION 

of amusement : is it worth while to spoil good sport in order to 
make doubtful philosophy? The objection rests upon a wholly 
inadequate conception of poetry, such as is betrayed in the antith- 
esis often made between poetry and philosophy. But poetry is 
simply creative philosophy. The philosopher and the poet are 
alike thinkers, but they express their thinking in different forms ; 
the philosopher thinks in abstract principles and arguments, the 
poet expresses his thoughts in the concrete, in the illustrative 
examples he creates. The two types meet in physical science. 
Now, the physicist is a philosopher, conveying what he has 
observed of nature in laws and inductions. At another time, in 
what he calls experiments, the physicist creates : he contrives, at 
his arbitrary will, peculiar combinations, which would not be 
brought into existence but for him, and obedient nature exhibits 
what her working would do under these conditions. In a similar 
way poetry and fiction are an experimental side to the philosophy 
of human hfe. History, biography, psychology, ethics, correspond 
to the physicist's mere observation of nature ; these studies limit 
the material they use to what happens to have happened. Poetry 
and fiction use the same material of human life without limiting it 
to what has chanced actually to occur; all that would naturally 
happen in the conditions contrived makes the material of creative 
literature, which can thus give to its treatment of human life all 
the range of crucial experiment. 

I say boldly, that the study of human life will never hold its 
own, in comparison with the study of physical nature, until we 
recognise the true position of poetry and fiction in philosophy. 
Our present confinement of moral studies to histories and abstract 
ethics holds the humanities back in the elementary stage of obser- 
vation without experiment. More than this, the survey of life that 
bounds itself by facts is not even the best kind of observation : it 
is like the timid examination of nature by one who will use noth- 
ing but the naked eye. The life that is close around observers is 
an eddying whirl of unrelated particulars ; what more is wanted 
to make particulars into the general ideas we call truth is either 



INTRODUCTION 3 

too far off to be seen, or so near as to be out of perspective. The 
same difficulty in the observation of nature we meet by the use of 
the telescope and the microscope ; it is true that when we look 
through these we do not see things, but the images of things, yet 
it is only by aid of such images that we can get nature at the 
proper distance for observation. The poetic mind is the lens 
provided by nature for human life ; ' works of imagination ' are so 
called because they give us the ' images ' of human things, cleared 
from the vagueness of too great distance, or the obscurity caused 
by irrelevant details. The Shakespearean Drama constitutes a vast 
body of such creative observations in human life, made through a 
peerless instrument ; they invite arrangement and disposition into 
general truths. 

The same consideration disposes of another type of doubters, 
who meet any attempt at careful analysis of a play with the ironic 
question whether Shakespeare really intended to convey such 
subtle conceptions; whether the traditional personality of the 
poet suggests the slightest inclination to psychology and ethics; 
further, if it were otherwise, must not his psychology and ethics 
be hopelessly out of date ? But Shakespeare is not here presented 
as a psychologist at all, elementary or advanced, in the sense in 
which the word is used by the objector. The poet's work is to 
project upon the screen of our imagination pieces of human Hfe, 
which it is for psychology and ethics to analyse ; and if a modern 
psychology cannot bear confronting with the life revealed in 
Shakespeare, it is so much the worse for the psychology. And the 
question what a poet is consciously thinking about and intending 
when he is making his poem is a curious speculation that belongs 
to biography, and not to literary criticism. He has constructed 
his drama, and it is before us : whatever thinking is found to be 
latent in this drama, that is for us the thought of Shakespeare. 

It is altogether too late in the day to question the existence of 
a philosophy of Shakespeare ; almost from the time of the poet 
himself the subject has maintained itself in literature, and attracted 
to itself the greatest minds. Samuel Johnson and Coleridge, 



4 INTRODUCTION 

Goethe and Victor Hugo, have devoted their great powers to 
elucidation of the thought of Shakespeare. Systems of Shakes- 
pearean philosophy have been elaborated, in Germany by such as 
Gervinus and Ulrici, in America by Mr. Denton J. Snider; if 
British scholarship has been less partial to the theme, yet Professor 
Dowden has examined the Mind as well as the Art of Shakespeare. 
It is impossible even to name the lesser authorities in this field ; 
and it has always been a standard theme for the pulpit, the lecture 
platform, and the magazine. In the universities of Germany and 
the United States no small section of their hterary studies is occu- 
pied with the philosophical analysis of this one dramatist. The 
study of Shakespearean philosophy has fully estabUshed itself: the 
sole question can be. Is the method of this study sound? 

The beUef that the currently accepted treatment of Shakespeare 
is in important respects unsound is the motive of the present work. 
Two fallacies are prominent, affecting different orders of mind. 
One may be Ccilled the Fallacy of Quotations : the attempt so 
constantly found to give us the mind of Shakespeare on any topic 
by means of copious quotations from the scenes of the plays. Yet 
it is obvious enough that, in dramatic literature, no amount of 
quoted passages can give us the ideas of the dramatist, or anything 
else but ideas appropriate to the imaginary speakers. Shakes- 
peare did not say, as many people suppose, ' Frailty, thy name is 
woman ' : he merely suggested that an irritated lover might say 
so. In one play we read — 

Conscience is but a word that cowards use, 
Devised at first to keep the strong in awe. 
In another — 

This conscience doth make cowards of us all ! 

Is Shakespeare responsible for both, or either, of these contradic- 
tory sentiments? or are they anything more than the natural 
thoughts of such men as Richard the Third and Hamlet? Yet it 
seems almost impossible to eliminate from the popular discussion 
of the dramatist this mere stringing together of quotations. The 



INTRODUCTION ^ 

fallacy is not confined to the popular treatment of literature. 
Classical scholars are still to be found repeating the patent 
absurdity that Euripides was a woman hater, on the strength of 
diatribes against the sex cited from his plays : the acumen that 
would distinguish the finest shades of difference in the uses of ou 
and TTfe being careless as to the broad difference there is between 
being a misogynist and painting misogyny. And the same fallacy 
runs riot in the treatment of the Bible : Divine authority will be 
claimed for the saying that * Man is born to trouble as the sparks 
fly upward/ in spite of the fact that, in the drama of /^^, the 
words are uttered by a speaker whom God repudiates, declaring 
that he has not spoken that which is right. 

How then, it will be asked, are we to arrive at the thought of 
Shakespeare ? The position here taken is that it is the construc- 
tion of the plot, not the dialogue of the scenes, that contains a 
dramatist's philosophy. The ideas underlying the dialogue are 
put forward, not as true, but as relative to the speakers. But for 
the plot the dramatist himself is responsible : he has created a 
story, or modified a traditional story, in such a way as to excite 
certain reflections and emotions; and in those reflections and 
emotions the thinking of the dramatist is to be traced. This of 
course does not mean that the matter of the scenes is ignored ; 
but such matter can be truly interpreted only when seen in the 
perspective of the whole plot. For plot is dramatic perspective : 
the harmony of all details in a unity of design. It is in fiction like 
providence in the world of reality : every play is a microcosm, of 
which the poet is the creator, and the plot is its providential scheme. 
Thus the fundamental principle of the present treatment of the 
subject is that Shakespeare's plots are the key to Shakespeare's 
thought, and that in story construction philosophy is dramatically 
presented. 

To this general position I would add that a special conception 
of plot must be recognised for Shakespeare. I find myself out of 
sympathy with the current analysis of dramatic technique, which, 
however able in detail, seems in method to be no more than an 



6 INTRODUCTION 

attempted adaptation of Aristotle's principles to new matter. 
But Aristotle's criticism was based on only a single dramatic 
species; it is treason against Aristotle — the most inductive of 
ancient philosophers — to foist his scheme upon a type of litera- 
ture at the opposite pole of dramatic development from himself. 
Greek tragedy was the drama of situation : stage influences and 
the unities suppressed all of the single story except its crisis, and 
for such drama the development and solution of a crisis must 
constitute the whole of plot. Between Aristotle and Shakespeare 
the literary history of many centuries was piling up aggregations 
of the most varied stories into the vast edifice of Romance. 
Shakespeare's is Romantic Drama, and in this combination 
Romance is the dominant partner ; the single situation stretches 
to the prolonged interest of story, and the interest of story itself 
becomes complex with story multiplication. Thus while irony, 
nemesis, and the like, which made up a whole plot for the 
Greeks, are conspicuously illustrated in Shakespeare, yet in 
analysis these fall into a subordinate place, and it is the harmony 
and balance of correlated stories that here comes to the front. 

To take a simple example. In the perspective of such a plot 
as that of the Merchant of Venice the dominant impression is the 
combination of two distinct stories, taken originally from two 
different books of romance : the Story of the Cruel Jew, and the 
Caskets Story. They are interwoven into a single scheme by the 
simple device that Bassanio, hero of the Caskets Story, is the com- 
plicating force which brings about all the trouble in the Story of 
Antonio and Shylock ; while the heroine of the Caskets, Portia, is 
the resolving force which in the other story sets all right. But if 
this were all there would be a flaw in the scheme : the spectacle 
of Portia, in male attire before the public of Venice, rescuing the 
state from a judicial murder, is grand, but a touch too masculine. 
Accordingly, a third story from a third book of romance is inter- 
woven with the other two — the Story of the Betrothal Ring : the 
eifect of which is to show how the heroic woman is also a girl 
brimming over with good natured mischief. Again : the Story of 



INTRODUCTION 7 

the Jew, if developed at full length, involves an interval of waiting, 
while the bond is running its course of three months ; instead of 
the action being allowed to drag, Shakespeare brings in a fourth 
story, the Elopement of Jessica and Lorenzo, to fill up with its 
eleven scenes the interval, and change a weakness into an additional 
interest. Thus by a sort of dramatic counterpoint four stories 
move on side by side, interwoven like a treble, alto, tenor, and 
bass. The action is continually satisfying the ancient dramatic 
interest of the development and solution of situations. But in 
the harmony of the plot these effects are secondary to the antith- 
esis of the two main stories. In the one, we see the strong yet 
opposite personalities of Antonio and Shylock successively exalted 
and depressed by the most casual of chances : as if human char- 
acter were at the mercy of accident. But in the other story, 
upon what seems the elaborately contrived accident of the 
choosing of the caskets the whole fate of Portia is to depend : 
yet, as we Hsten to the soliloquies of the wooers, we see how it is 
their inmost characters, and not, as they think, their judgment, 
that is swaying their choice : here character dominates accident.^ 

The plan of this work then is twofold. I reserve to an 
Appendix, interesting only to students, a formal scheme of plot 
for each play of Shakespeare, based on the fundamental principle 
of the interrelation of stories. In the body of the book, for the 
general reader, I seek to unfold the philosophy of Shakespeare 
obtained on the basis of such plot analysis. 

In the application of such a plan another fallacy is to be 
avoided, of a most seductive kind : indeed, it is the most pro- 
found of the interpreters of Shakespeare's thought who have fallen 
most deeply into this error. It might be called the Ethical Fal- 
lacy : for it would seem that preoccupation with some ethical 
system has warped the straightforward reading of the facts of the 
story as they are presented in the plays. Such interpreters will 
set up principles Hke these: that 'the deed returns upon the 
doer ' j that ' character determines fate ' ; and the details of the 
1 This is discussed more at length below, pages 168-169, 3 ^ 5-317* 



8 INTRODUCTION 

dramas will unconsciously be twisted until they yield a consistent 
moral scheme of which such principles are the basis. Cordelia is 
a devoted daughter sacrificing everything to save her father, yet, 
in the providence of Shakespeare's play, she comes to the ignoble 
death of hanging. To save this discordance between character 
and fate a theory is set up as to the relations of family duty and 
duty to the state, and Cordelia is made a sinner against patriotism, 
in that she uses a foreign army to rescue her father. But there is 
nothing in the details of Shakespeare's play to which any such 
theory could attach itself : it is purely a modern idea read into 
a poem of a different era. There are abundant illustrations in 
Shakespeare of the suggested connection of character and fate : 
but to make this a universal principle is as false to Shakespeare as 
it is to real life. Such treatment is as it were the homoeopathy 
of critical science : in the poetic as in the physiological field a 
single principle, and that a valuable one, is illegitimately stretched 
into a universal system. It is the fallacy that Bacon formulates as 
premature methodisation. 

Against such dangers of interpretation the only defence is the 
purpose of rigid inductive observation for the detailed facts of 
the plays. But it is just here that literary study shows at its worst : 
it lags behind other studies in being the last even to attempt 
inductive observation. I have no logical subtilty in mind when I 
use the word * inductive.' I merely mean that literary questions, 
hke other questions, should be decided upon evidence. A com- 
mon idea is that literary criticism means brilliant writing upon 
literary topics ; the preHminary stage of weighing detailed evidence 
before one starts to write brilliantly does not seem to count for 
much. The great commentaries upon Shakespeare seem cogent 
while they are being read apart from the text. Yet upon exami- 
nation it will often be found that their relevancy is to the tradi- 
tional stories, which in fact Shakespeare never fails to modify ; or 
to the stage version, a selection based on histrionic opportunities 
rather than dramatic construction ; or a comment which is exhaust- 
ive in what it actually touches will be found to have ignored 



INTRODUCTION 9 

altogether some fifty lines of the scene, which the commentator 
has forgotten, or skipped as tiresome, but which when thought 
out will be seen to present an aspect of the situation where 
Shakespeare has seen further than his critics. And the cause for 
these lapses in writers of undoubted power is not far to seek : it 
lies in the unfortunate tradition of Shakespeare as a 'rugged 
genius,' sublime in his master strokes, but untutored in art, and so 
filling out his sketches with tawdry or irrelevant details. We are, 
at this late date, learning, first, that a poem is a crystallization 
rather than a constmction, to be realised as a unity and not blue- 
pencilled like a school exercise; secondly, that Shakespeare's 
* artlessness ' was an art more complex than the world had yet 
seen, so that his would-be interpreters must commence by being 
his diligent scholars. When the literary analyst shall become as 
conscientious as the philologist in his reading of the text, I am 
persuaded that such fallacies as I have indicated will not maintain 
themselves. And here again is seen the advantage of taking plot 
for the starting point of dramatic analysis : it is in feeling after the 
harmony of all parts of a whole that one-sided impressions tend to 
counteract one another. 

One more caution must be added. I have so far spoken as 
if there were no difference between life as it is depicted in the 
drama and the Hfe of reality. And indeed the common idea that 
the two are identical has been assisted by a certain image — 
attributed, by the usual Fallacy of Quotations, to Shakespeare, 
but in reality carrying only the authority of Hamlet — the descrip- 
tion of the stage as " holding up the mirror to nature." The 
comparison is apt enough for the purpose of Hamlet's speech. 
But that the drama is not merely a reflection of real life every 
reader may satisfy himself, by imagining his own life and the life 
of his household on the day on which he reads these lines repro- 
duced without flaw upon some stage : would this be drama ? Obvi- 
ously something would be lacking to make the reproduction of 
real life into drama, something of the nature of sifting, selection, 
adaptation. It appears, then^ that drama is not a reflection, but 



10 INTRODUCTION 

an arranged spectacle. Now a spectacle implies a spectator ; and 
the whole arrangement is contrived with regard to the spectator's 
point of view. This standpoint of the spectator enters fundamen- 
tally into all dramatic analysis. When we use such elementary 
terms as ' tragic,' ' comic,' we assume in their use the spectator's 
view point; we call the experience of Malvolio comic, yet it would 
be the reverse of comic to Malvolio. When Aristotle gives his 
famous definition of tragedy, as purifying the emotions of pity and 
terror by a healthy exercise of them, it is obviously the spectator's 
emotions with which his definition is concerned. Similarly the 
present inquiry, besides plot, must give attention to dramatic 
* tone ' — the technical expression for such differences as tragic, 
comic, humorous, and all their varieties and shadings. The con- 
ceptions of Shakespeare must be sought alike in plot, the course 
of events appearing in the play, and in tone, the sympathetic 
response of the spectator. 

With these preliminary observations the chapters that follow 
may be left to explain themselves. The inquiry falls into three 
natural parts. In the first, particular dramas will be presented to 
illustrate what may be recognised as root ideas in the philosophy 
of Shakespeare. Then the inquiry will widen, and survey the 
world of Shakespeare's creation in its moral complexity. , In the 
third part will be considered the forces of life in Shakespeare's 
moral world, so far as these express themselves in dramatic froms, 
from personal will at one end of the scale to overruling providence 
at the other end. 



BOOK I 

ROOT IDEAS OF SHAKESPEARE'S PHILOSOPHY 

Chapter I : Heroism and Moral Balance : The first four Histories 

Chapter II : Wrong and Retribution : The second four Histories 

Chapter III: Innocence and Pathos: The Tragedy of Romeo and 
Juliet 

Chapter IV: Wrong and Restoration: The Comedies of Winter's 
Tale and Cymbelifie 

Chapter V: The Life Without and the Life Within: The Mask- 
Tragedy of Henry the Eighth 



HEROISM AND MORAL BALANCE: THE FIRST FOUR 
HISTORIES 

Without doubt Henry of Monmouth is to be regarded as the 
grand hero of the Shakespearean world. It is in approaching 
this theme that the dramatist feels the limitations of dramatic form. 

O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend 

The brightest heaven of invention, 

A kingdom for a stage, princes to act 

And monarchs to behold the swelling scene! 

Then should the warlike Harry, like himself, 

Assume the port of Mars ; and at his heels, 

LeashM in like hounds, should famine, sword and fire 

Crouch for employment. 

The historic materials Hmit what follows to a picture of war. But 
wise counsellors of the King — not speaking in the presence, 
which might suggest flattery, but in secret conference with one 
another — indicate the universal genius of Henry. 

Hear him but reason in divinity, 

And all-admiring with an inward wish 

You would desire the King were made a prelate : 

Hear him debate of commonwealth affairs. 

You would say it hath been all in all his study : 

List his discourse of war, and you shall hear 

A fearftil battle rendered you in music : 

Turn him to any cause of policy. 

The Gordian knot of it he will unloose, 

Familiar as his garter : that, when he speaks, 

The air, a charter'd libertine, is still. 

And the mute wonder lurketh in men's ears, 

To steal his sweet and honey'd sentences.^ 

1 Henry the Fifth .• I. i. 38. 
13 



14 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

Thus the great dramatist must needs borrow from a sister art, and 
narrative poems fill up the intervals between the acts, epic com- 
bining with drama to make a medium wide enough for the pres- 
entation of the complete hero. 

Yet at first sight it might seem as if a great exception would 
have to be made to the moral greatness of Henry. This kingly 
figure has been, in his youth, the grief of his father's heart, the 
prodigal son of court life ; affections holding a wing " quite from 
the flight of all his ancestors " have kept him wasting his years in 
the riotous living of low taverns and street brawls. But a closer 
examination of Henry as he is seen developing through the series 
of plays will put quite another face upon this matter. The truancy 
of the prince is no more than the wider and fuller nature rebelling 
against the limitations of worn-out ideals. Bolingbroke and those 
about him belong to the past ; theirs is a life bounded by the nar- 
row horizon of feudalism. Their business is war, and their justice 
is judicial combat ; the war moreover is a war of feudal parties for 
feudal power. The divinity of kingship is a sentiment with them, 
but only while it is on their side. Bolingbroke, while he is weak, 
bends the knee before Richard ; when unexpected powers have 
flocked to his standard he overturns Richard's throne and appro- 
priates the divine kingship to himself. The Percies have been his 
chief backers in this ; the moment the new King turns against their 
family they discover that Richard was a " sweet rose " and Boling- 
broke its "canker." Now Henry of Monmouth has been born 
into a new era, when the one-sided structure of feudahsm is to 
break down, and society is to find a new equilibrium ; his youthful 
freshness has caught the new interest of human nature itself, the 
interest of fife outside feudal conceptions. ResponsibiHty and the 
call to action have not yet come ; Henry can afford to stand aside, 
and let the factions eat up one another. Meanwhile, what are 
attractions to the men of the time have no zest for him : a mere 
show of feudal life in mimic spectacle as a relief from feudal life in 
dull earnest. When they tell the prince of the " Oxford triumphs " 
that were to celebrate successful treason — 



HEROISM AND MORAL BALANCE 1 5 

His answer was, he would unto the stews, 
And from the commonest creature pluck a glove, 
And wear it as a favour ; and with that 
He would unhorse the lustiest challenger. 1 

All this is but the breath of change stirring, that is to mark a 
new generation. But curiosity grows in time to be something 
deeper ; slowly observers of Henry come to see that he is " ob- 
scuring his contemplation under the veil of wildness." ^ 

This is not an afterthought, put forward to excuse a life that 
has been misspent. The first scene in which we view Henry sur- 
rounded by the Falstaff crew ends with a soliloquy.^ 

I know you all, and will a while uphold 
The unyoked humour of your idleness : 
Yet herein will I imitate the sun. 
Who doth permit the base contagious clouds 
To smother up his beauty from the world. 
That, when he please again to be himself. 
Being wanted, he may be more wonder'd at, 
By breaking through the foul and ugly mists 
Of vapours that did seem to strangle him. 

Meanwhile, it is not a case of a Haroun al Raschid viewing low 
life under protection of night and disguise : Henry casts off all 
his rank, and meets human nature on its own level. He matches 
himself against the prince of humorists, and Falstaff can never 
get the better of him. He goes on to " sound the base-string of 
humility," and can out-trifle " a leash of drawers." 

They take it already upon their salvation, that though I be 
but Prince of Wales, yet I am the king of courtesy ; and tell 
me flatly I am no proud Jack, like Falstaff", but a Corinthian, 
a lad of mettle, a good boy, by the Lord, so they call me, 
and when I am king of England I shall command all the 
good lads in Eastcheap.'* 

1 Richard the Second : V. iii. 16. 8 / Henry the Fourth : I. ii. 219. 

2 Henry the Fifth .• I. i, 63. 4 / Henry the Fourth : II. iv. 9. 



1 6 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

Nothing comes in sight but Henry will master it. 

I am now of all humours that have showed themselves 
humours since the old days of goodman Adam to the 
pupil age of this present twelve o'clock at midnight.^ 

He is steady in his purpose of being in gay life without being of 
it ; with easy superiority he sits loose to the actions of his com- 
rades, and if these have done damage he repays " with advantage." ^ 
Henry's claim is that " in everything the purpose must weigh with 
the folly " ; ^ and it is a folly that never loses sight of wisdom. 

Well, thus we play the fools with the time, and the 
spirits of the wise sit in the clouds and mock us.* 

At last the wiser among the old generation begin to recognise in 
the prince's life that there is more than appears on the surface. 

Warwick. My gracious lord, you look beyond him quite : 
The prince but studies his companions 
Like a strange tongue, wherein, to gain the language, 
'Tis needful that the most immodest word 
Be look'd upon and learn'd ; which once attain'd, 
Your highness knows, comes to no further use 
But to be known and hated. So, like gross terms, 
The prince will in the perfectness of time 
Cast off his followers ; and their memory 
Shall as a pattern or a measure live. 
By which his grace must mete the lives of others, 
Turning past evils to advantages.^ 

That a wider and more balanced nature is the explanation of 
the prince's truancy is the more evident the more he is compared 
with the men of his age. Henry's father is the last to understand 
him. Bolingbroke's was a soul tuned to a single string ; his serious- 

1 / Henry the Fourth : II. iv. 104. * // Henry the Fourth : II. ii. 154. 

2 / Henry the Fourth : II. iv. 599. 5 // Henry the Fourth : IV. iv. 67. 
* // Henry the Fourth : II. ii. 196. 



HEROISM AND MORAL BALANCE 1 7 

ness has been an ambition in which the dazzle of the crown has 
Winded to all moral distinctions ; or if he is haunted with a sense 
of guilt, he cherishes the purpose of a crusade to the Holy Land 
for atonement. In the long scenes between father and son we 
have simplicity in the chair of authority, seeking to mould to his 
own narrowness a character he is unable to fathom. Bolingbroke 
even goes so far as to hold up to his son the example of his own 
youthful days.^ Now we know how Bohngbroke's young manhood 
impressed contemporaries. 

... His courtship to the common people ; 
How he did seem to dive into their hearts 
With humble and familiar courtesy . . . 
Off goes his bonnet to an oyster-wench ; 
A brace of draymen bid God speed him well 
And had the tribute of his supple knee.^ 

But, with a naivete worthy of Polonius explaining policy to his 
servant, King Bolingbroke impresses on his son that all this famil- 
iarity had a treasonable purpose under it. 

By being seldom seen, I could not stir 

But like a comet I was wondered at ; 

That men would tell their children, < This is he' ; 

Others would say, 'Where, which is Bolingbroke'? 

And then I stole all courtesy from heaven, 

And dress'd myself in such humility 

That I did pluck allegiance from men's hearts. 

Loud shouts and salutations from their mouths, 

Even in the presence of the crowned King. 

Against this as background the reader of the scene feels Henry's 
pranks to be almost respectable. The prince receives all this 
long-winded rebuking with filial deference ; and these scenes all 

1 / Henry the Fourth : 1 1 1 . ii, from 39. 

2 Richard the Second : I . iv. 24. 



1 8 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

end happily, for the charm of Henry's personal presence is as 
irresistible to his father as to Falstaff. The last encounter of king 
and prince is characteristic of the two natures.-^ Bolingbroke, 
dying, must needs have the golden crown by his bedside, to gaze 
on to the last. Henry (believing his father dead) places the 
crown on his own head ; little impressed as he has been by the 
glitter of royalty, now that the crown has come to him by " lineal 
honour," Henry will guard it against a world in arms, and walks 
aside to realise the new sense of responsibiUty. BoHngbroke 
shrieks at finding his crown gone, and can still see no explanation 
but the vulgar hurry of a libertine for succession to means of free 
license. The misunderstanding is easily removed, and then the 
finally reconciled father gives his son his dying advice : — which is 
to distract a kingdom with foreign wars as a preventive against 
too close scrutiny of the royal title. 

Or is it with the young men of the time that Henry is to be 
compared ? There is Richard, king i7i esse and not in posse ^ prosti- 
tuting to his own lusts the divine kingship in which all believe. 
Or there is Aumerle, faithful plotter for his hero Richard, until the 
moment of personal danger sends him rushing to Bolingbroke with 
abject prayers for pardon.^ There is above all John of Lancaster, 
who has taken his elder brother's place in council. The Prince 
of Wales, the moment he obeys the call to arms, becomes the 
hero of the war ; without a spark of rivalry, nevertheless, Henry 
extols Lancaster's prowess as beyond his own ; in the time of 
victory he obtains the royal permission to release Douglas, and 
turning over to his brother the office of freeing the prisoner 
almost warms Lancaster to a sense of generosity. Later on an 
independent command gives to this " demure boy " an oppor- 
tunity to show his true nature : Lancaster's fetch of policy proves 
to be a solemn quibble under which he perpetrates an act of the 
blackest treachery.^ 

1 // Henry the Fourth : IV. v. 

2 Richard the Second : V. ii, iii. 

3 / Henry the Fourth : V. iv, v ; // Henry the Fourth : IV. ii. 



HEROISM AND MORAL BALANCE 1 9 

It is however Hotspur who is the ideal of youth to Bolingbroke 
and his feudal generation : 

Amongst a grove, the very straightest plant ; 
Who is sweet Fortune's minion and her pride : 

. . . O that it could be proved 
That some night-tripping fairy had exchanged 
In cradle-clothes our children where they lay, 
And call'd mine Percy, his Plantagenet! 

Yet viewed from any other standpoint than that of feudalism Hot- 
spur appears to be only a fighting animal, with riotous eloquence 
to mouth his riotous thoughts. When he rouses his mighty spirit 
against the King, it is his own fellow-conspirators who speak of 
him as " drunk with choler," in a " mad heat " pouring forth " a 
world of figures " ; to use his own words, he is " whipp'd and 
scourged with rods, nettled and stung with pismires " at merely 
hearing of " this vile poHtician, Bolingbroke." ^ Careless as to pos- 
session, he will nevertheless " cavil on the ninth part of a hair," 
if it be a question of bargaining.^ He can respect no type of hfe 
but his own : he risks the alliance which is the only hope of his 
cause in order to mock in Glendower a different tone of grandi- 
osity from his own fire-eating ; the ballad which is charming all 
other ears is to Hotspur no better than the mewing of a cat ; it 
seems to offend his Englishship that a Welshman should talk 
Welsh.^ When one after another of the concerted movements 
fails at the rendezvous Hotspur speaks as if this were encourag- 
ing, so great is his itch to fight ; it is his own comrades who de- 
nounce the imaginative madness which has brought the cause to 
its ruin.^ Such mere battle passion seems as irresponsible a thing 
as Henry's gayeties ; it is noteworthy that Percy's word as the sword 
of his conqueror pierces him is this — 

O, Harry, thou hast robb'd me oi my youthJ* 

1 I Henry the Fourth : I. iii, whole scene. 

2 / Henfy the Fourth : IIL i. 140. 3 I Henry the Fourth : IIL i, whole scene. 
'^ I Henry the Fourth : IV. i. 76-83, and whole scene; H Henry the Fourth: 

\, iii. 26-33. ^ / Henry the Fourth : V. iv. 77. 



20 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

Both the rivals use the much abused word ' honour.' 

Hotspur. By heaven, methinks it were an easy leap, 

To pluck bright honour from the pale-faced moon, 
Or dive into the bottom of the deep. 
Where fathom-line could never touch the ground, 
And pluck up drowned honour by the locks. 

At the climax of his career Percy expresses his conception of such 

honour : 

An if we live, we live to tread on kings ; 

If die, brave death, when princes die with us!^ 

There comes a situation when the other Henry exclaims : 

But if it be a sin to covet honour, 
I am the most offending soul alive. 

The honour he is coveting is the post of cruel danger : 

If we are mark'd to die, we are enow 

To do our country loss ; and if to live. 

The fewer men, the greater share of honour. ^ 

How do the two Harries appear when the course of events brings 
them across one another's path ? They tell Hotspur of the prince 
in arms against his cause : he pours contempt upon the " sword- 
and-buckler Prince of Wales," and, but that the King loves him 
not, he would have him poisoned with a pot of ale. Prince 
Henry's generous praise of his rival is reported : Hotspur is un- 
moved, and can only conceive of the advancing general as a wild 
libertine.^ Meanwhile the King has extolled Hotspur to his son, 
and the easy prince at last takes fire. 

Percy is but my factor, good my lord, 

To engross up glorious deeds on my behalf; 

1 I Henry the Fourth • I. iii, 201 ; V. ii. 86. 

2 Hefiry the Fifth : IV. iii. 20, 28. 

» / Henry the Fourth : IV. i, from 94 ; V, ii, from 46. 



HEROISM AND MORAL BALANCE 21 

And I will call him to so strict account, 
That he shall render every glory up, 
Yea, even the slightest worship of his time, 
Or I will tear the reckoning from his heart. 

Henry plunges into the war, moves straight to his rival, redeems 
his boast to the letter ; and then makes so little of achievement 
that he laughs while Falstaff appropriates the deed to himself.^ 

Or there is in the Dauphin another example of correct young 
manhood. Like Hotspur, the Dauphin cannot conceive of any 
type of life different from his own ; what has not been drawn to 
its model must needs be "a vain, giddy, shallow, humorous 
youth"; his seniors in vain seek to convince him by facts.^ It 
is clear that the French prince has never known youth as a period 
of freedom and moral choice ; his Hfe has merely been passing 
through stages of development of the feudal warrior. What ideal- 
ising power he possesses runs to the glorification of his horse. 

Ca, ha! he bounds from the earth as if his entrails were 
hairs ... he trots the air ; the earth sings when he touches 
it ; the basest horn of his hoof is more musical than the pipe 
of Hermes. ... He is pure air and fire ; and the dull ele- 
ments of earth and water never appear in him, but only in 
patient stillness while his rider mounts him. . . . The man 
hath no wit that cannot, from the rising of the lark to the lodg- 
ing of the lamb, vary deserved praise on my palfrey : it is a 
theme as fluent as the sea: turn the sands into eloquent 
tongues, and my horse is argument for them all. 

Yet, when the chivalrous magnificence of this prince is pricked 
by the point of close observation, it seems to collapse into a 
somewhat dubious courage, and this on the testimony of mihtary 
comrades. 

Orleans. The Dauphin longs for morning. 
Rambures. He longs to eat the English. 

1 1 Henry the Fourth : III. ii. 147; V. iv. i6i, and whole scene. 
a Henry the Fifth .• IL iv. 30. 



22 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

Constable. I think he will eat all he kills. 

Orleans. By the white hand of my lady, he's a gallant prince. 

Constable'. Swear by her foot, that she may tread out the oath. 

Orleans. He is simply the most active gentleman in France. 

Constable. Doing is activity ; and he will still be doing. 

Orleans. He never did any harm, that I heard of. 

Constable. Nor will do none to-morrow: he will keep that good 

name still. 

Orleans. I know him to be valiant. 

Constable. I was told that by one that knows him better than you. 

Orleans. What\s he? 

Constable. Marry, he told me so himself; and he said he cared not 

who knew it.^ 

These are the types of the old nobility with which Henry's 
youtli refused to be in tune. It is abundantly evident that all 
these have taken up the strenuous life simply by reason of their 
limitations ; this was all that they had in them to do. When the 
call comes Henry proves the most strenuous of them all: he 
keeps his warlike father from a faint-hearted retreat,^ and is as 
easily superior to his military comrades as he has been to FalstafF 
and Poins. But Henry has the larger nature, in which action is 
balanced by repose, accepted ideals can reinforce themselves by 
curiosity and fresh interest in the raw material of human nature. 
To the successive generations of men youth ever comes as the 
period of exploration, the wamicrJaJire during which new ingre- 
dients may be absorbed for crystallisation into a richer compound ; 
nature's great barrier against a specialisation which would settle 
into hereditary caste. In this sense Henry's is a natural youth. 
But to say this is of course not to justify all that the prince does 
in his adventurous nonage. The master temptation of the young 
is the desire to see life for themselves ; like the hero of Ecclesi- 
astes, they will plunge into folly carrying their wisdom with them. 
Henry himself does not come scathless through the ordeal ; on 
his own principles the attack upon the Chief Justice is an outrage, 

1 Henry the Fifth : III. vii, whole scene. a / Henry the Fourth : V. iv. 



HEROISM AND MORAL BALANCE 23 

an outrage atoned for at the moment by submission, and after- 
wards by the promotion of his rebuker. But the 'wildness' of 
the prince has been a symptom of moral vigour, and its issue has 
been moral enrichment. Not for a moment has Henry been 
under any spell of deception ; he has humorously recognised 
that he must suppress deeper feelings which the best of his associ- 
ates were incapable of understanding.^ There is thus no miracle 
in the ease with which he drops them. 

Being awaked, I do despise my dream.'^ 

But men are known by their dreams. When the new type of 
king is on the throne it is found that his father's enemies " have 
steeped their galls in honey ";^ the wide human sympathies of 
Henry have established his throne upon the broad basis of a 
people's love. 

The play of Henry the Fifth presents the moral hero in the 
new life of responsibility. It is the same breadth and balance 
of human nature that is the fundamental impression. The fate of 
history makes the reign a single achievement of war. But with 
Henry action must be balanced by council. What the first act 
presents is a total contrast to all that the dying advice of Boling- 
broke had forecast ; it is bishops and aged statesmen who are 
urging on war, the King " in the very May-morn of his youth " 
who is holding back with moral scruples and far-reaching policy. 
The moral question is one of *' the law of nature and of nations," 
as the world then understood them, and the learned Canterbury 
is the legal adviser who must expound. But Henry makes the 
most solemn of appeals for a disinterested judgment. 

And God forbid, my dear and faithful lord, 

That you should fashion, wrest, or bow your reading, 

Or nicely charge your understanding soul 

With opening titles miscreate, whose right 

1 // Henry the Fourth : II. ii. 35-74. « Henry the Fifth : II. ii. 30. 

2 // Henry the Fourth : V. v. 55. 



24 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

Suits not in native colours with the truth . . . 
Under this conjuration speak, my lord ; 
For we will hear, note and believe in heart 
That what you speak is in your conscience wash'd 
As pure as sin with baptism. 

When in answer Canterbury has made his exposition of the Salic 
law, the King still forces his council to look all round the question 
to the furthest consequences of action. There comes at last a 
point where deliberation may crystallise into decisive resolution. 

Now are we well resolved ; and, by God's help, 
And yours, the noble sinews of our power, 
France being ours, we'll bend it to our awe, 
Or break it all to pieces. 

Not until now, when the rights of the question have been debated 
in calmness to a settlement, does Henry admit the embassy from 
the Dauphin. He listens to the studied insult with dignity ; in 
answer, he first meets the jester on his own ground and outjests 

him. 

When we have match'd our rackets to these balls, 
We will, in France, by God's grace, play a set 
Shall strike his father's crown into the hazard. 
Tell him, he hath made a match with such a wrangler 
That all the courts of France will be disturb'd 
With chaces. 

The hint at the wildness of his youth Henry turns against the 
Dauphin. 

We never valued this poor seat of England . . . 
But tell the Dauphin I will keep my state, 
Be like a king and show my sail of greatness 
When I do rouse me in my throne of France. 

But, his indignation excited at such playing with edge tools of war 
and national devastation, Henry goes on to the thought that the 
jest has turned tennis-balls to gun-stones : 



HEROISM AND MORAL BALANCE 2$ 

For many a thousand widows 
Shall this his mock mock out of their dear husbands ; 
Mock mothers from their sons, mock castles down . . . 
His jest will savour but of shallow wit, 
When thousands weep more than did laugh at it. 



It is important, for the ideal character of the whole picture, that 
this incident is held back to its proper place. Calm deliberation 
has yielded to decisive resolution ; only then may the adversary's 
msolence be used to carry forward resolution to the white heat of 
passion. 

For a moment there is an obstruction in the current of events, 
and heroism is seen against a background of treason. What gives 
dramatic impressiveness to the second act is this, that the evil is 
just as broad and ideal as is the good against which it is arrayed : 
the passage that follows reads as a counterpart to the bishops' 
expatiation upon Henry's perfections. 

Whatsoever cunning fiend it was 
That wrought upon thee so preposterously 
Hath got the voice in hell for excellence. 

Show men dutiful? 

Why, so didst thou : seem they grave and learned? 
Why, so didst thou : come they of noble family? 
Why, so didst thou : seem they religious ? 
Why, so didst thou : or are they spare in diet. 
Free from gross passion or of mirth or anger. 
Constant in spirit, not swerving with the blood, 
Garnished and deck'd in modest complement. 
Not working with the eye without the ear, 
And but in purged judgment trusting neither? 
Such and so finely bolted didst thou seem : 
And thus thy fall hath left a kind of blot, 
To mark the full-fraught man and best indued 
With some suspicion. I will weep for thee; 
For this revolt of thine, methinks, is like 
Another fall of man. 



26 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

From the third act the character of Henry is seen concentrated 
in action : he who was so " modest in exception " can now be 
" terrible in constant resolution." Here, as ever, the force of the 
character seems to He in its balance ; the most opposite qualities 
blend in unity of purpose. 

In peace there's nothing so becomes a man 
As modest stillness and humility : 
But when the blast of war blows in our ears, 
Then imitate the action of the tiger ; 
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood, 
Disguise fair nature with hard-favour'd rage . . . 
Hold hard the breath, and bend up every spirit 
To his full height. 

As the spirit of peace can be made a foil for the spirit of war, so in 
Henry mercy lends wings to fury ; in the general conduct of war 
Henry acts on the principle that " when lenity and cruelty play for 
a kingdom the gentler gamester is the soonest winner," and for that 
very reason on the eve of storm and assault he can hold over the 
hesitating foe the inevitable horrors of the flesh'd soldier, in liberty 
of bloody hand ranging with conscience wide as hell. The many- 
sided nature of the King has drawn to him all types and orders of 
men ; those descended from fathers of war-proof he bids dishonour 
not their mothers, the good yeomen " whose limbs were made in 
England " he calls upon to show the mettle of their pasture ; the 
varied ranks around their leader stand " like greyhounds in the 
slips straining upon the start." Where in preceding reigns history 
has been war of factions, we have in the war of this play English, 
Scotch, Welsh, Irish, all blending into a harmony of national 
prowess and enthusiasm, Welsh Fluellen leading the hero worship 
with his fantastic glorification of Alexander of Macedon and Harry 
of Monmouth.^ 

But the fulness of Henry's character can be brought out only 
by trouble. From the centre of the play we hear of pestilence 

1 Henry the Fifth : IV. vii. 



HEROISM AND MORAL BALANCE ^7 

and famine : the famous night piece that ushers in the fourth act 
presents the " poor condemned EngUsh," on the night before the 
battle, sitting patiently like sacrifices by their camp fires, while 
the overwhelming hosts of the enemy are staking to the throw of 
the dice their captives of the morrow. 

O now, who will behold 
The royal captain of this ruin'd band 
Walking from watch to watch, from tent to tent, 
Let him cry, ' Praise and glory on his head! ' 
For forth he goes and visits all his host, 
Bids them good morrow with a modest smile, 
And calls them brothers, friends and countrymen. 
Upon his royal face there is no note 
How dread an army hath enrounded him; 
Nor doth he dedicate one jot of colour 
Unto the weary and all-watched night. 
But freshly looks and overbears attaint 
With cheerful semblance and sweet majesty : 
That every wretch, pining and pale before. 
Beholding him, plucks comfort from his looks. 

Through the whole of the terrible crisis the force of the army is 
the spirit of its King, responsive to every note heard around him, 
adequate to every call. He greets with dignity a group of his 
nobles, pointing to the first streaks of dawn : 

There is some soul of goodness in things evil . . . 
For our bad neighbour makes us early stirrers. 

He turns to accost a venerable figure. 

Henry. Good morrow, old Sir Thomas Erpingham : 
A good soft pillow for that good white head 
Were better than a churlish turf of France. 

Erp. Not so, my liege : this lodging likes me better, 
Since I may say, " Now lie I like a King." 

With familiarity that charms the old man Henry borrows his cloak, 
and in mufiled disguise continues his passage through the host 



28 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

He has a bout of camp wit with the unsuspecting Pistol, and hears 
his own praises in the old Eastcheap slang. He marks some 
pedantic fussiness of Fluellen as he passes along, and sees beneath 
it good quahties to be noted for the future. Then he gets into a 
long chat with a company of EngUsh soldiers, and delights to keep 
in play the irony of the discussion about the King : how — 

Though I speak it to you, I think the King is but a man, as I 
am : the violet smells to him as it doth to me ; the element 
shows to him as it doth to me. 

how, one suggests, — 

If the cause be not good, the King hath a heavy reckoning to 
make, when all those legs and arms and heads, chopped off in 
a battle, shall join together at the latter day. . . . 

how, on the contrary, — 

Every subject's duty is the King's ; but every subject's soul is 
his own. Therefore should every soldier in the wars do as 
every sick man in his bed, wash every mote out of his con- 
science: and dying so, death is to him advantage; or not 
dying, the time was blessedly lost wherein such preparation 
was gained. 

The thrill that goes through the circle by the camp fire at these 
last words changes to laughter and rough sarcasm, when Henry 
slips for a moment into a royal tone that seems out of keeping 
with his disguise ; in another moment the King, half angry and 
half amused, finds himself shoved out of the circle, with a gage in 
his hand which he has sworn to fight out after the battle. But, 
left alone, he reaHses with acute anguish the weight of responsi- 
bihty all are putting upon " the King " ; and how this King is but 
a single human heart, hidden under the thin veil of ceremony. A 
call to battle is heard, and self-consciousness for an instant becomes 
an agony of penitence — not for his own sins, but for his father's, 



HEROISM AND MORAL BALANCE 29 

which may be visited on him.^ In another moment he is with his 
army. Westmoreland has just wished for one ten thousand of those 
men who will be idle in England that day. Henry will have not 
one more. 

Rather proclaim it, Westmoreland, through my host, 

That he which hath no stomach to this fight, 

Let him depart ; his passport shall be made 

And crowns for convoy put into his purse : 

We would not die in that man's company 

That fears his fellowship to die with us. 

Before Henry has finished his picture of the coming battle, as a 
privilege to be jealously guarded like a vested interest, the same 
Westmoreland wishes that the King and he could fight the battle 
all by themselves ; with laughing arithmetical confusion Henry says 
he has unwished five thousand men. 

At this point the arrival of the herald brings the spirit of the 
enemy as a foil to the heroism of Henry.^ The tone of the French 
army has throughout been the pride that goes before a fall. They 
are sorry that the English numbers are so few, that there is not 
work enough for all hands ; the superfluous lackeys of their host, 
they declare, are enough to purge the field of such a hilding foe. 

For our losses, his exchequer is too poor ; for the eifusion of 
our blood, the muster of his kingdom too faint a number ; and 
for our disgrace, his own person, kneeling at our feet, but a 
weak and worthless satisfaction. ^ 

What the herald who brings messages like this has to encounter is 
a patient dignity flavoured with humour. 

Henry. Bid them achieve me and then sell my bones. 

Good God! why should they mock poor fellows thus? 

The man that once did sell the lion's skin 

While the beast lived, was kilPd with hunting him. 

1 Henry the Fifth : IV. i. 309. 2 iv. iii. 79. » III. vi. 140. 



30 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

The brag of superior numbers is at best a poor thing : there is 
something heroic in the braggartism of desperation. 

We are but warriors for the working-day ; 
Our gayness and our gilt are all besmirched 
With rainy marching in the painful field ; 
There's not a piece of feather in our host — 
Good argument, I hope, we will not fly — 
And time hath worn us into slovenry : 
But, by the mass, our hearts are in the trim ; 
And my poor soldiers tell me, yet ere night 
They'll be in fresher robes, or they will pluck 
The gay new coats o'er the French soldiers' heads 
And turn them out of service. 

From inspection of host and reception of herald we glide insen- 
sibly into the scenes of the battle ; but, whatever phase of war may 
be uppermost, Henry is the soul of it all. Now he is weeping 
over the story of York and Suffolk, how they kissed one another's 
gashes, as they died together, first fruits of the slaughter ; now he is 
loudly proclaiming his Welsh birth to humour the valiant Fluellen ; 
now he is holding back the rejoicings of his soldiers until victory is 
more decisive.^ He responds without a moment's hesitation to the 
most terrible demands that the accursed business of war can make : 
once, when he orders retahation^ for the slaughter of non-comba- 
tants ; once, when the weakness of inferior numbers obliges him to 
threaten — happily, only to threaten — slaughter of prisoners in 
order to dislodge a band of the enemy from an inaccessible posi- 
tion.^ With the rising spirits of unmistakable victory the army 
becomes as skittish as a mob of schoolboys : Henry gives vent to 

1 Henry the Fifth : IV. vi, etc. 

2 So I understand the order at the end of IV. vi. French reinforcements, instead 
of meeting the English, have joined the fugitives, and the two together have fallen 
upon the non-combatants of the English camp. So the incident is understood by 
Fluellen (IV. vii. i-io) : this great stickler for principle in martial law entirely ap- 
proves Henry's action. This explanation is also favoured by concluding lines of 
IV. iv. 

« IV. vii. s8. 



HEROISM AND MORAL BALANCE 3 1 

the feeling in his practical joke of handing his gage to the uncon> 
scious Fluellen to redeem, and getting his pomposity a box on the 
ears from honest Bates, care being taken that no untoward conse- 
quences shall follow.^ In the midst of hilarity comes the French 
herald, and the first precise news of the day's fortune : as the ter- 
rible slaughter of the enemy and the small English loss are made 
known, high spirits give place to solemn awe ; — 

O God, thy arm was here ! 

Henry proclaims it death to boast of this victory, or to take from 
God the praise that is his only. 

It remains for the fifth act to display yet another side of Henry's 
character ; as action was at the commencement of the play balanced 
by council, so at its close war becomes a foil to love. The scene 
of wooing in broken English and broken French has always been 
a popular favourite. One of its chief charms is that it brings out 
the tact of the hero. Katherine is unmistakably the prize of war : 
Henry, who has been exalted by the bishops as commanding every 
kind of eloquence, chooses to woo her with the bluntness of the 
soldier, veiling tenderness under rough simplicity. 

If I could win a lady at leap-frog, or by vaulting into my sad- 
dle with my armour on my back, under the correction of brag- 
ging be it spoken, I should quickly leap into a wife. . . . 
And, while thou livest, dear Kate, take a fellow of plain and 
uncoined constancy ; for he perforce must do thee right, be- 
cause he hath not the gift to woo in other places : for these 
fellows of infinite tongue, that can rhyme themselves into 
ladies' favours, they do always reason themselves out again. 
... A good leg will fall ; a straight back will stoop ; a black 
beard will turn white ; a curled pate will grow bald ; a fair face 
will wither ; a full eye will wax hollow : but a good heart, Kate, 
is the sun and the moon ; or rather the sun, and not the 
moon ; for it shines bright and never changes, but keeps his 
course truly. If thou would have such a one, take me ; and 
take me, take a soldier ; take a soldier, take a King. 

1 IV. vii. 178, and whole scene, 



32 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

The effect of the whole scene is that, at the close of the story, 
conquest presents itself as a marriage of those two countries — 

. . . whose very shores look pale 
With envy of each other's happiness. 

It was with something like a flourish of the dramatic trumpet 
that we saw ushered in the protagonist of the Shakespearean stage. 
The heroism of character that has been thus presented has been 
found to consist, not in the grand passion of a Hotspur, plucking 
honour from heights and depths ; nor in the unparalleled achieve- 
ments of mediaeval romance ; nor in the infinite patience of the 
lives of the saints. Its foundation seems to be breadth of human 
nature, with freshness to expand the horizon when responsibihty 
is not calling for action. Its chief note is a moral balance, that 
will not allow action to overpower council, nor the spirit of war to 
eclipse the spirit of peace ; that is responsive alike to dignity and 
to humour, to pathos and to fun. It is the heroism of the full 
soul, not consciously ambitious even of moral greatness, yet 
adequate to every demand. 



II 

WRONG AND RETRIBUTION: THE SECOND FOUR HISTORIES 

The Shakespearean Drama contains a series of eight consecu- 
tive plays presenting EngHsh history j the series divides into two 
tetralogies, between which there is one curious parallel. Three 
plays of the first tetralogy, as we have seen, cover the developing 
period of a nature that, in the fourth play, rises to supreme hero- 
ism. Similarly, in the second tetralogy, the triple play of Henry 
the Sixth gives us successive stages of an advance towards an 
individuality which is presented, in the play that follows, as ideal 
villany. 

The parallel must however not be pressed ; for, whatever may 
be the precise facts as to the authorship of the three parts of 
Hemy the Sixth, it is felt by many readers that they do not make a 
continuous and consistent scheme like that of the other trilogy. 
The contents of the plays are crude history, with elementary pas- 
sions and melodramatic incident : for the most part scenes of 
factious turbulence, and civil wars in which father kills son, and 
son father. The heroes are such as butcher Clifford, thundering 
blood and death ; or his son, in cruelty seeking out his fame ; or 
wind-changing Warwick, setter up and setter down of kings ; or the 
" tiger's heart wrapp'd in a woman's hide " of Margaret, antipodal 
to all that is good. Amongst these are plunged from their earliest 
youth the "■ forward sons of York " : Richard is the most forward 
of them all.i There is that which marks him off from all the rest 
of his handsome family. He is a "valiant crook-back prodigy," 
a "heap of wrath, foul indigested lump"%- the language is the 

1 /// Henry the Sixth : I. i. 203. 

2 // Henry the Sixth : V. i. 157 ; /// Henry the Sixth : I. iv. 75 ; etc. 

^ 33 



34 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

bitter satire of enemies, but Richard's own soliloquies ^ are enough 
to show that his physique is either an outward symbol of a dis- 
torted soul, or else an accident that contributes its share to the 
prince's predisposition towards evil. In the earlier pictures of 
Richard we can see, with much that is merely boyish, suggestions 
of the strength and the moral distortion that are to combine later 
into consummate villany. In warlike deeds he is early pronounced 
by his father to have deserved best of the sons.^ In council we 
have him struggling to be beforehand with his elders, and he 
leaves them far behind in audacity of moral perversion. 

York. I took an oath that he should quietly reign. 

Edward. But for a kingdom any oath may be broken : 

I would break a thousand oaths to reign one year. 

Richard. No ; God forbid your grace should be forsworn. 

York. I shall be, if I claim by open war. 

Richard. I'll prove the contrary, if you'll hear me speak. 

York. Thou canst not, son ; it is impossible. 

Richard. An oath is of no moment, being not took 
Before a true and lawful magistrate, 
That hath authority over him that swears : 
Henry had none, but did usurp the place ; 
Then, seeing 'twas he that made you to depose, 
Your oath, my lord, is vain and frivolous.^ 

It is just here that we get our first glimpse of the master passion 
beneath this boy's vigorous personality. 

And, father, do but think 
How sweet a thing it is to wear a crown ; 
Within whose circuit is Elysium 
And all that poets feign of bliss and joy. 

Richard is dominated by ambition ; but at present it is within the 
bounds of vehement partisanship, sympathy with the ambition of 
his father. And in the earher scenes Richard seems not devoid 

1 III Henry the Sixth : III. ii. 153; V. vi. 70; Richard the Third: I. i. 14; etc. 

2 /// Henry the Sixth : Li. 17. » /// Henry the Sixth : L ii. 15. 



WRONG AND RETRIBUTION 35 

of natural feelings ; though side by side with these are also sug- 
gestions of what will be the demonic levity of the fully developed 
villain. He has freshness of soul enough to become enthusiastic 
about a brilliant sunrise ; ^ but when the natural sun turns into the 
miraculous omen of three suns, and his elder brother exclaims — 

Whatever it bodes, henceforward I will bear 
Upon my target three fair-shining suns — 

Richard instantly comes out with a pun at Edward's expense — 

Nay, bear three daughters : by your leave I speak it, 
You love the breeder better than the male. 

There is room for bitter taunts as the brothers stand over the 
fallen body of their father's torturer and their brother's murderer, 
but with Richard the taunt can become a gibe : 

What, not an oath ? nay, then the world goes hard 
When Clifford cannot spare his friends an oath.^ 

Richard seems to be sincere — though we cannot be sure — in his 
hero-worship of Warwick and Northumberland,^ and when he 
deems it prize enough to be his vahant father's son."* Nay, there 
even seems to be a point at which he is open to the touch of 
popular superstition, and in the moment of being ennobled shrinks 
from the ^ ominous ' dukedom of Gloucester.^ 

The turning-point in the movement of the third play is found 
where King Edward succumbs to the charms of Lady Grey, and 
by a mesalliance alienates his strong supporters, and causes the 
current of events to flow backward. This is a turning-point also 
for Richard : a long soliloquy^ reveals the changing character, the 
constituent elements precipitating into a unity of unscrupulous 
ambition. The new suggestion of royal offspring brings out, with 

1 /// Henry the Sixth : II. i, from 25. 4 /// H^nry the Sixth : II. i. 20. 

2 /// Henry the Sixth : II. vi, from 31. 5 /// Henry the Sixth : II. vi. 107. 

« /// Henry the Sixth : II. i. 148, 186. 6 /// Henry the Sixth : III. ii, from 124. 



36 THE MORAI. SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

a shock, the personal hopes that had been silently forming in the 
breast of the remoter heir. 

Would he were wasted, marrow, bones and all. 
That from his loins no hopeful branch may spring. 
To cross me from the golden time 1 look for ! 

This thought yields to the natural reflection on the number of 
personages who already — without waiting for possibilities — stand 
between Richard and his soul's desire ; until sovereignty seems 
but a dream : 

Like one that stands upon a promontory 

And spies a far-off shore where he would tread, 

Wishing his foot were equal with his eye, 

And chides the sea that sunders him from thence. 

With empty impatience he says to himself in reference to these 
obstacles to his rise — 

ril cut the causes off, 
Flattering me with impossibilities. 

He turns to other alternatives : but the bitter thought of his 
deformity comes to check aspirations after a life of pleasure. 

ril make my heaven to dream upon the crown. 
And, while I hve, to account this world but hell, 
Until my mis-shaped trunk that bears this head 
Be round impaled with a glorious crown. 

But again Richard is plunged in despair at the many lives that 
*' stand between me and home." He struggles out of the tor- 
menting perplexity by a review of his resources — resources of his 
own personal qualities : the passage may perhaps, in our contrast, 
stand as counterpart to the bishops' laudation of the universal 
powers of Henry the Fifth. 

Why, I can smile, and murder whiles I smile, 
And cry ' Content ' to that which grieves my heart. 
And wet my cheeks with artificial tears. 
And frame my face to all occasions. 



WRONG AND RETRIBUTION 3/ 

I'll drown more sailors than the mermaid shall ; 
ril slay more gazers than the basilisk ; 
ril play the orator as well as Nestor, 
Deceive more slily than Ulysses could, 
And like a Sinon take another Troy. 
I can add colours to the chameleon, 
Change shapes with Proteus for advantages. 
And set the murderous Machiavel to school. 
Can I do this, and cannot get a crown? 

Here then a clear stage in his development has been completely 
attained by Richard : he is a man of one idea and one ambition, 
consciously emancipated from all moral scruples. 

In the latter half of the play, if there is a note of ambiguity in 
Richard's action, it is the ambiguity of the part he has set him- 
self to play : he is hostile to the King, faithful to the crown, with 
the faithfulness of the butcher to the sheep he means to eat. 
Richard seconds, or even leads, in the discontent at the royal 
marriage, until Clarence has reached the point of threatening 
open rupture, when Richard draws back : 

I hear, yet say not much, but think the more.^ 

The fruit of this ill-fated marriage becomes manifest in the revolt 
of Warwick, Clarence deserting to him. Richard remains with 
the King, " not for the love of Edward, but the crown." ^ In the 
rapidly changing events that succeed, Richard is the follower who 
pushes his leader forward from point to point. In the tragedy 
of young Prince Edward's assassination' Richard has no greater 
share than his brothers ; the difference is that these brothers have 
exhausted their souls by this horror, Richard has but whetted his 
appetite. 

Q. Margaret. O, kill me too ! 

Gloucester. Marry, and shall. {Offers to kill her. 

Held back by main force from this atrocity, the resources of 
Gloucester have found him another. 

1 /// He?iry the Sixth : I V. i. 83. 2 jy. i. 126. 8 V. v. 



38 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

Gloucester. Clarence, excuse me to the king my brother ; 
I'll hence to London on a serious matter. 

They all understand, but none dares follow to the assassination 
of a king. 

We thus reach the crowning incident of the trilogy, as it were 
the graduating exercise of Richard's education in villany. He 
has long been a man of one ambition ; but, so far as the path 
of his ambition is concerned, the single quick stab in which Rich- 
ard has had so much practice would be all that is required. 
Wherefore then the long protracted scene ?^ The peaceful Henry 
is no bad reader of men, and he catches exactly the spirit of the 
incident with his question — 

What scene of death hath Roscius now to act ? 
There is now artistic appreciation of the villany, as well as ambi- 
tious purpose to indicate the crime. With Mephistophelean re- 
straint of passion the murderer gravely mocks his victim from 
point to point ; when the helpless Henry in his outpouring has 
passed from bitter taunts and descriptions of hideous deformity to 
enumeration of the evils the monster is ordained to bring on his 
country, the point has been reached for the dramatic coup : 

Gloucester. I'll hear no more : die, prophet, in thy speech : [Stabs 
him. 
For this, amongst the rest, was I ordain'd. 

Richard mocks the aspiring blood of Lancaster sinking into the 
earth, and then with a superfluous stab starts a summary of the 
whole situation. 

Down, down to hell ; and say I sent thee thither : 

I, that have neither pity, love, nor fear. 

Indeed, 'tis true that Henry told me of; 

For I have often heard my mother say 

I came into the world with my legs forward : 

Had I not reason, think ye, to make haste. 

And seek their ruin that usurp' d our right ? 

1 /// Henry the Sixth : V. vi. 



WRONG AND RETRIBUTION 39 

The midwife wonder'd and the women cried 

*0, Jesus bless us, he is born with teeth!' 

And so I was : which plainly signified 

That I should snarl and bite and play the dog. 

Then, since the heavens have shaped my body so, 

Let hell make crookM my mind to answer it. 

I have no brother, I am like no brother ; 

And this word ' love,' which greybeards call divine, 

Be resident in men like one another 

And not in me : I am myself alone. 

It is natural to place this soliloquy side by side with that of the 
third act. In the one, Richard devoted himself to ambition, at 
whatever cost of villanous action ; in the other, the villany is 
embraced. In the third act there was enumeration, in the nature 
of a claim, of qualities suitable to evil deeds ; in the fifth act the 
claim has been vouched for by the dripping sword and murdered 
King. In the third act Richard aspired : in the fifth act Richard 
has attained. 

We pass to the play which takes its name from Richard/ and 
almost the first words we hear are these : 

I am determined to prove a villain. 

As the opening of Henry the Fifth presented what seemed to 
outside observers a sudden conversion, so these words mark the 
end of development, and announce a character complete in its 
kind. What exactly is the process that has been thus com- 
pleted? It is the common phenomenon of human nature by 
which things that have been means to an end come in time to 
be an end in themselves. A man takes up a laborious business, 
with the distinct motive of providing a competence or even means 
of luxury ; as the years go on, the business itself and the attraction 
of wealth-making become uppermost; worth his millions, the 

1 The play of Richard the Third as a study of retribution has been worked out 
at length in Chapters IV, V of my Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist. See above, 
page V. 



40 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

man continues to labour; he enjoys of course such luxuries as 
his means afford, but the business, not the luxury, has become 
the motive. So Richard began with the commonplace motive of 
ambition, learning for the sake of his ambition to do evil deeds ; 
by the end of the trilogy the evil itself has come to be the attrac- 
tion ; he continues of course to remove obstacles barring him 
from the crown, and to defend it when won, but evil itself, not 
ambition, has become the master passion. The new play gives 
us ideal villany in the sense that villany has itself become the 
ideal. Richard has become an artist in evil : the natural emo- 
tions attending crime — whether of passionate longing, or horror 
and remorse — have given place to artistic appreciation of master- 
pieces. And another element of the ideal is added : that of 
success. The cumulative effect of successive victories surrounds 
the hero with an air of irresistibility that makes him even more 
irresistible. 

A fundamental interest in fiction is the association of character 
with fate; when our conception of character is complete we 
naturally ask, What sort of fate is there meted out in this play ? 
Our first thought is of retribution. Retribution is a fundamental 
idea in morals. It amounts almost to an instinct : the smallest 
child feels a virtuous impulse to slap the table against which it 
has stumbled. And in traditional philosophy wise men have 
sought to make the whole moral government of the universe 
synonymous with the judgment on the sinner. In the case before 
us many readers of Shakespeare feel that the play is defective in 
this very point. The fate of Richard is very much like the fate 
of other men : where is there any retribution commensurate with 
the ideal picture of wrong ? 

Such a feehng seems to betray a mistaken way of looking at 
things, the mistake being equally one of morals and of dramatic 
interpretation. In real Hfe such a feeling has led, in past ages, 
to the institution of judicial torture. Human life is so precious 
(such has been the unconscious argument) that one who simply 
murders another deserves death ; what then is to be done in the 



WRONG AND RETRIBUTION 41 

case where to murder is added long contriving malice, with aggra- 
vations of cruel detail, or violations of gratitude and ties of kin- 
ship? Hence human justice has devised the stake and the 
apparatus of torture, and outraged loyalty has demanded that 
the slayer of a Coeur-de-Lion shall be flayed alive. Modem 
enlightenment has discarded all such devices ; it has learned to 
look away from the nice weighing of individual guilt and punish- 
ment to the field of morals as a whole, as the sphere in which 
principle is to triumph. Now the dramatic equivalent for this 
" field of morals as a whole " is plot. Each play is a microcosm, 
and the providential government swaying in that microcosm is to 
be found only when the complexity of the play has been analysed 
into a unity of design. It is the failure to found dramatic inter- 
pretation upon the study of plot that has led to dissatisfaction 
with Shakespeare's treatment of this story. When the play has 
been fully analysed it will appear that, in this case, the whole 
government of the universe is placed before us as a complex 
scheme, of which the single underlying principle is retribution. 
To begin with, the action and experience which make up the 
story of the play are enveloped in the wider hfe of history, which 
both fringes them round and finks this to the other plays of the 
series. The history is the Wars of the Roses : and this history 
is presented by Shakespeare as retributive history. In the heart 
of the drama Margaret's curses emphasise the thought that what 
the various personages of this Yorkist story are suffering at one 
another's hands is retribution upon the whole house of York for 
their earlier cruelty to Lancastrians ; Richard's retort upon Mar- 
garet is a reminder that such cruelty to Lancastrians was itself 
nemesis upon them for still earlier outrages upon Yorkists.^ Thus 
history is made to take the form of the pendulum swing of retri- 
bution between one and the other of the sinful factions. Again, 
a similar spirit is read into the experience of the crowd of inferior 
personages who make the underplot of the play. Naturalists love 
to dwell upon the chain of destruction that binds together the 
^Richard the Third: I. iii. 174, and whole scene. 



42 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

grades of animal life : tiny humming-bird seized by tarantula, 
tarantula gripped by lizard, lizard made victim of snake, snake 
pounced upon by hawk, hawk yielding to eagle, which in turn is 
brought down by the human rifle. A similar chain of retribution 
is being forged when Clarence, deserter to the Yorkist house, 
meets his death at the hands of the Yorkist King, and gives a 
triumph to the Queen's kindred ; the Queen's kindred, through 
the shock of Clarence's death, lose the King, their only protector, 
and suffer the taunting gibes of Hastings; Hastings, visited by 
an exactly similar doom, is laughed at by Buckingham in his 
security ; the secure Buckingham is cast off by a doom as taunt- 
ing as that of Hastings.^ These repeated strokes of doom, more- 
over, are not merely sentences of death : in each single case there 
is a sudden recognition of the forgotten principles of justice, or 
an appreciation of some bitter irony : ^ fate seems to move forward 
with the rhythmic march of nemesis. Thus, apart even from the 
case of Richard himself, the plot of the play is an intricate net- 
work of retribution in its varied aspects — a pendulum of nemesis, 
a chain of retribution, a rhythm of retributive justice. 

When our analysis enlarges to take in Richard, he is at once 
recognised as the motive force of the play : all these multiplied 
retributions are, directly or indirectly, forwarded in their course 
by the agency of the hero. Unconsciously to himself, this 
Richard, whose villany has been such an outrage upon our sense 
of justice, has been chief factor in a scheme of retribution. In 
the language of ancient prophecy, he is the Hammer of God : 
brute force suffered to continue as a purifier of evil, until its work 
is done, and it can itself be purified out of the world. 

But what of Richard when he changes from the agent to the 
victim of nemesis? It might have been so ordered that the earth 
should open its mouth and swallow up the monster : in which case 

^ Compare in J^icAard the Third: II. i. 131; II. ii. 62; III. iv. 15-95; III. i, 
from 157; III. ii. 114; IV. ii; V. i. 

2 E.g. I. iv. 66; III. iii. 15 ; and especially V. i. 10-22. Compare generally my 
Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist, pages 114-8. 



WRONG AND RETRIBUTION 



45 



there would have been a moment's pang, and all would have been 
over. Or the resourceful brain of a sensational novelist might 
have contrived some exquisite bodily torment to clutch Richard 
in its fangs : and then the reader, in spite of himself, would have 
felt the gates of his sympathy opening, and the hunchback villain 
might have come out a hero, such as Shylock in his misfortunes 
is to many readers of The Merchant of Venice. Shakespeare's 
treatment of the present case is very different. Richard is an 
artist in evil, who plays with human life : accordingly Destiny 
plays with Richard. Fate hides itself, until — long past the centre 
of the poem — the crowned villain has attained an impregnable 
sense of security ; then comes the first sign of change, and the 
name of Richmond has only to be mentioned for memories to 
flash upon Richard, how the destined avenger has been the theme 
of prophecies which the victim never reahsed till too late.^ From 
this point the play becomes a series of alternating rumours, 
rumours of success as well as failure, in order that hope may 
quicken sensitiveness to despair. Gradually the King is driven 
from his magnificent imperturbability ; he loses temper, he makes 
mistakes, he casts about for devices, he changes his mind, he 
feverishly takes refuge in drink : in a word, he consciously re- 
cognises the stages of his descent to the commonplace.^ And 
all this is but dramatic preparation, leading up to the climax of 
retribution. 

This climax is of course the Night Scene.^ Its force rests upon 
the moral principle underlying the career of Richard : it is an 
assertion of individual will against the order of the universe. All 
ordinary restraints upon individual will — sympathy, inherited 
affections, remorse — Richard has learned to cast off: his position 
seems impregnable. But he has forgotten that there are condi- 
tions under which the will is unable to act ; and these are found, 
not in some remote combination of unlikely circumstances, but 

1 IV. ii. 88-122. 

2 Compare such passages as IV. iv. 444-56 ; 509-18 ; V. iii. 1-8 ; 47-70. 
8 V. iii, from 118. Compare also IV. i. 85. 



44 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

in the most commonplace of everyday conditions — sleep. All 
other powers may be in full activity when we slumber : the will is 
entirely paralysed. Hence when Richard, in the weariness of the 
night before the battle, drops asleep, he is held as in a vice by 
Destiny, while outraged humanity asserts itself. In his helpless- 
ness he must see the rhythmic procession of his victims, counting 
up the crimes that are to be remembered in the morrow's doom ; 
still helpless, he must watch the ghostlike figures pass over to the 
opposite camp, foreshadowing the desertion to the foe, whom they 
bless as the coming victor. If the sleeping powers turn from 
passive to active, it is but to take part against the helpless sleeper 
in the play of Destiny upon its victim. Now he is fleeing from 
the battle and his horse has failed him ; another horse secured, 
he cannot mount for the streaming of his open wounds.^ Another 
quick change of dream movement, and all around is shining with 
the livid gleam of hell fire,^ and there goes up a groan — 

Have mercy, Jesu ! 

It has broken the spell : but there is still to be traversed the 
horrible stage of the gradual awakening from nightmare, and 
the ghastly dialogue of the two selves is heard — the suppressed 
self of inherited humanity, and the artificial callousness so pain- 
fully built up. In time his will recovers control : but meanwhile 
Richard himself recognises the shattered nerves with which he is 
to meet his final fall : 

By the apostle Paul, shadows to-night 

Have struck more terror to the soul of Richard 

Than can the substance of ten thousand soldiers.^ 

Thus the play of Richard the Third exhibits, in its most pro- 
nounced form, Shakespeare's treatment of Wrong and Retribution. 
He has imagined for us an evil nature, set off to the eye by dis- 

1 V. iii. 177. 

2 So I interpret the words on waking, The lights bum blue. 
8 V. iii. 216. 



WRONG AND RETRIBUTION 45 

torted shape, arising out of a past of historic turbulence, attaining, 
in the present play, a depth of moral degeneration in which 
villany is accepted as an ideal. Such ideal villany is projected 
into a universe which, in this one drama, is presented as a com- 
plex providential order every element of which is some varied 
phase of retribution. 



Ill 

INNOCENCE AND PATHOS: THE TRAGEDY OF 
ROMEO AND JULIET 

In the preceding chapter we have been reviewing a drama the 
plot of which presents the universe as an elaborate system of retri- 
bution. In turning from this to other stories we are not to expect 
that in these the same aspect of the universe will be the one 
emphasised. I beheve that no mistake has done more to distort 
Shakespeare criticism than the assumption on the part of so many 
commentators that retribution is an invariable principle. Their 
favourite maxims are that the deed returns upon the doer, that char- 
acter determines fate. But these specious principles need careful 
examination. If the meaning be merely this, that the deed often 
returns upon the doer, that character is one of the forces deter- 
mining fate, then these are profound truths. But if, as is usually 
the case, there is the suggestion that such maxims embody inva- 
riable laws — that the deed always returns upon the doer, that char- 
acter and nothing but character determines the fate of mdividuals 
— then the principles are false ; false alike to Ufe itself and to the 
reflection of life in poetry. 

To take a crucial illustration. The Cordelia of Shakespeare is 
recognised by all as a sweet and loving woman who devotes her- 
self to save her father. In the sequel she is defeated, imprisoned, 
and cruelly hanged. Commentators who have assumed the inva- 
riability of nemesis feel bound to find in Cordelia's character some 
flaw which will justify such an ending to her career. They suggest 
that, however noble her aim, in the means employed she has 
sinned against patriotism, by calhng in the French — natural ene- 
mies of England, we are to understand — to rescue Lear from his 

46 



INNOCENCE AND PATHOS 47 

evil daughters : this sin against patriotism must be atoned for by 
suffering and ignominy. I am persuaded that no one who comes 
to the play without a theory to support will so read the course of 
the story. There is not a single detail of Shakespeare's poem to 
which such a violation of patriotism can be attached ; those in the 
story who are most patriotic are on Cordelia's side, and even Albany, 
whose office obliges him to resist the French invasion, complains 
that he cannot be valiant where his conscience is on the other 
side.^ Cordelia no more sins against patriotism, in using the 
French army to resist the wicked queens, than the authors of the 
revolution of 1688 were unpatriotic, when they called in William 
of Orange to deliver England from King James. How then is the 
untoward fate of Cordelia to be explained ? The plot of the play 
at this poini is dominated, not by nemesis, but by another dramatic 
motive ; it is not satisfying our sense of retribution, but exhibiting 
the pathos that unlocks the sympathy of the spectator, and sheds 
a beauty over suffering itself. Cordelia has devoted herself to her 
father : fate mysteriously seconds her devotion, and leaves out 
nothing, not even her life, to make the sacrifice complete. 

It is obvious that to approach dramas with some antecedent 
assumption as to principles invariably to be found in them is a vio- 
lation of the inductive criticism attempted in this work, which 
frankly accepts the details of a poem as they stand m order to 
evolve from these alone the underlying principles. But I would 
for the moment waive this point in order to ask. What authority 
have we for the assumption itself that retribution is an invariable 
principle of providential government? In the drama of antiquity, 
as all will concede, no such principle holds; Greek tragedy is 
never so tragic as where it exhibits the good man crushed by 
external force of Destiny. But the contention is often made that 
all this has been changed by modern religion, not any particular 
theological system, but the whole spirit of modern religion, of 
which the Bible is the embodiment ; that this has introduced such 
conceptions of God and of man that Shakespeare and other 
1 Lear: V. i. 23. 



48 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

modern poets cannot give us a sense of poetic satisfaction unless 
their dramatic world presents a providence wholly of retribution, 
under which men face no power determining their individual fates 
other than the destiny they have made by their individual charac- 
ters. To me it seems extraordinary that any such contention 
should have been put forward in the name of biblical religion. 
Not to mention other objections, such a plea flies in the face of 
what, from the literary point of view, is the most impressive por- 
tion of the Bible itself — the Book of Job. Here we have a hero, 
whom God himself accepts as perfect and upright, overwhelmed 
by waves of calamity reducing him to penury and excruciating him 
with disease. Men gather together to discuss the strange event. 
The three Friends of Job take up exactly the position I am here 
impugning — the invariable connection of suffering with sin, so 
that the calamities of Job are proof positive of some unknown 
guilt. Job tears their argument to tatters ; in the excitement of 
debate he seems to recognise the impunity of the sinner as a 
principle of providential government not less prominent than the 
principle of retribution. Who is to decide between these opposite 
views ? In the epilogue to Job God is represented as declaring 
that the three Friends have not said the thing that is right, as Job 
has. And all the while the reader of the Book of Job has known 
— from the opening story — that the calamities were sent from 
heaven upon Job for reasons connected with his righteousness, and 
not with his sin. Thus the biblical Book of Job is the strongest 
of all pronouncements against the invariability of retribution, the 
strongest of all assertions that, besides this, other principles are 
recognised in the providential government of the universe. 

The attempt to analyse all experience in terms of retribution is 
false ahke to real life and to life in the ideal. In the real life about 
us a little child dies : how in this experience has character deter- 
mined fate? Not the character of the child, for there has been 
no responsibility. There may be cases in which the death of a 
child is retribution upon the carelessness or folly of parents ; but 
will any one contend that this is always so ? Yet the experience is 



INNOCENCE AND PATHOS 49 

not meaningless : there is a certain beauty as we contemplate the 
child Hfe consummated in its own simplicity, before the weight of 
coming maturity has effaced a single Hneament of childhood's own 
special grace. Nemesis has no application, but there is room for 
pathos. 

It is however zeal for the idealising of Ufe that has given strength 
to the contention that in poetry at all events character alone must 
determine fate. But, in the spirit of the Book of Job, we may make 
bold to say that such invariability of retribution lowers the concep- 
tion of human life ; the world becomes not less but more ideal 
where the providential system of government gives room for prin- 
ciples other than retributive. Moral elevation impHes moral choice. 
But if the connection between character and fate were immutable 
— if righteousness necessarily and inevitably brought reward, and 
guilt necessarily and inevitably ended in ruin — then in so mechani- 
cal a Ufe men would be forever choosing between prosperity and 
adversity, while there would be no opportunity for the higher choice 
between right and wrong. In Job, the Council in Heaven recog- 
nises that the unbroken prosperity of the patriarch has made it 
impossible to say whether his life is a life of true piety or of inter- 
ested policy;^ it is only when unmerited calamities have over- 
whelmed him that Job can reveal his higher self with the cry, 
" Though he slay me, I will trust him." The three children of the 
Book of Daniel, confronting cruel persecution, believe indeed that 
their God can deliver them from the tyrant ; but we feel them as 
rising to a higher moral plane when they go on to face the other 
alternative, ^' But if not, we will not bow down."^ It is the ex- 
ceptions to the universality of retribution that make the free atmos- 
phere in which alone the highest morality can develop. 

Whether therefore we consider real life or life in the ideal, 
whether we review ancient tragedy or the literature of the Bible, 
we are led to the conclusion that a moral system revealed in 
dramatic plot must be expected to exhibit nemesis as a single 
aspect of providence, and not as its sole law. Now one of the 

1 Job i. 9-IO. 2 Daniel iii. 17-18. 



50 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

principles underlying the exceptions to the universality of retribU' 
tion, one of the forces that will be found to come between individ- 
ual character and individual fate, is that which is expressed by the 
term Accident. I know that to many of my readers this word will 
be a stumbHngblock ; those especially who are new to ethical studies 
are apt to consider that their philosophical reputation will be com- 
promised if they consent to recognise the possibiUty of accidents. 
But such a feeling rests upon a confusion between physics and 
morals. In the physical world, which is founded upon universality 
and the sum of things, we make it a preliminary axiom that every 
event has a cause, known or yet to be discovered. But in the world 
of morals, where individual responsibility comes in, it is obvious that 
events must happen to individuals the causes of which are outside 
individual control. To take the simplest example. A number of 
persons, in the ordinary course of their daily life, enter a railway 
train ; the train goes over an embankment into a river, and fifty 
of the occupants meet a violent and painful death. We call this, 
rightly, a ' railway accident.' It is true that, so far as the incident 
is a part of the physical world, there have been ample causes for all 
the effects : there has been careless service, or undermining waters, 
and gravitation has done its proper work. But in the moral world 
of each individual who has thus perished there has been no causa- 
tion ; nothing these persons have done has caused the disaster, 
nothing left undone by them would have averted it; in the uni- 
verse of their individual lives the incident remains an effect without 
a cause. A deed has here returned upon others than the doer ; 
whatever we may call it in physics, the event must be pronounced 
a moral accident. 

Shakespeare in his handling of story gives recognition to acci- 
dent as well as retribution ; the interest of plot at one point is the 
moral satisfaction of nemesis, where we watch the sinner found 
out by his sin ; it changes at another point to the not less moral 
sensation of pathos, our sympathy going out to the suffering which 
is independent of wrong doing. A notable illustration of the lat- 
ter is the tragedy of /Borneo and Juliet. In this play Shakespeare 



INNOCENCE AND PATHOS 5 1 

engages our sympathies for two young and attractive lives, and 
proceeds to bring down upon them wave after wave of calamity, 
which come upon them not as the result of what Romeo and 
Juhet have done, but from accident and circumstances not within 
their control. Instead of wrong and retribution, we have in this 
case innocence and pathos. Here however a misconception must 
be avoided. To say that Romeo and Juhet are innocent is not 
the same thing as to say that they are perfect. No one cares to 
discuss whether these young souls had not their full share of orig- 
inal sin ; nor is it relevant to inquire whether two different per- 
sons in their situation might or might not have acted differently. 
The essential point is that in the providential dispensations of 
Shakespeare's story, the tragedy overwhelming the lovers is brought 
about, not by error on their part, but by circumstances outside 
their control, by what is to them external accident. 

It is convenient to divide the course of the story into three 
stages : there is the original entanglement of the secret marriage ; 
there is the accession of entanglement in the banishment of Romeo ; 
and there is the final tragedy of the fifth act. In each case we are 
to see the essential events happening, not through the sin or error 
of the hero or heroine, but through forces outside their personal 
will. 

It is, I suppose, an impertinence for grave analysis to pry into 
the merry mystery of boy and girl love ; otherwise, I would remark 
that the mode in which Romeo and Juliet become attached to one 
another brings us close to the domain of the accidental. Some 
men walk into love with their eyes open, looking to the right and 
to the left, and above all looking behind to see that their retreat 
is open to the last moment. Others glide into love, yielding half 
consciously to an attraction as fundamental as gravitation. Yet 
others, by their phrase * falling in love,' recognise suddenness and 
shock ; an even higher degree of suddenness and shock is found 
in the social phenomenon of ' love at first sight.' Of course such 
love at first sight may, in some cases, be no more than the quick- 
ening, under favourable surroundings, of what would under other 



52 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

circumstances have come about more gradually. But what are we 
to say of the cases where the shock of a momentary meeting has 
reversed for two human beings the whole direction in which each 
of the hves has been tending? 

In the natural course of events Romeo and JuHet would never 
have met : they belong to families bitterly at feud, and Romeo, 
moreover, is in love with a Rosaline, whose unrequiting coldness 
drives him to desperation. Accident must intervene in order to 
bring the two even to physical proximity. The Capulets are giv- 
ing a dance, and the head of the house hands his servant a list 
of guests to be invited. The man does not tell his master that he 
cannot read writing, but, outside the house, must ask the first per- 
sons he meets to decipher the paper for him. By accident,^ the 
first persons he meets are a party of Montagues, Romeo amongst 
them ; the name of Rosaline among those invited leads Romeo 
to accept a suggestion of a surprise mask. Yet at the door of the 
Capulet house — so does our story quiver with the accidental — 
Romeo is all but backing out ; his heart is too heavy with Rosa- 
line's unkindness for his heels to make merry ; at last he goes for- 
ward for comradeship sake. Once inside, he is found risking his 
life to inquire whose is the beauty that has smitten him.^ 

O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright! 
It seems she hangs upon the cheeks of night 
Like a rich jewel in an Ethiope's ear. 

Juliet at first has not seen Romeo under his mask ; the moment 
he has accosted her, her words speak the shock of helpless 

passion.^ 

If he be married, 
My grave is like to be my wedding bed. 

An instant's encounter has reversed the whole current of two 
lives ; Juhet's words emphasise this sudden reversal.* 

1 L ii. 34-106; compare L iv. 3 i, y. 136. 

2 L V. 47. 4 I. V. 140. 



INNOCENCE AND PATHOS 53 

My only love sprung from my only hate ! 
Too early seen unknown, and known too late ! 
Prodigious birth of love it is to me, 
That I must love a loathed enemy. 

Is it overstraining to say that such reciprocal passion has come 
as an external shock into each separate life? Suppose the story 
had been so ordered that, at this ball of the Capulets, a thunder- 
storm had intervened, and Romeo and JuHet by two successive 
flashes had been instantly killed : would not every commentator 
have recognised a story of most remarkable accident, in spite of 
the existence of a science of electricity? Not less accidental than 
such lightning strokes has come the encounter which, in an instant 
affording no room for choice, has changed Romeo and Juliet from 
loathed hereditary foes into passionate lovers for life. 

But love is one thing, marriage another ; it may be urged that, 
while Romeo and Juliet have without their consent been caught in 
the toils of passion, yet moral responsibihty comes in with the fur- 
ther question, whether they shall yield to the passion or resist. 
We have to ask then, what just cause or impediment there is why 
these two lovers should not marry. Is it the impediment of 
parental objection ? It might be a delicate matter to inquire how 
far parental opposition is a final barrier to the marriage of chil- 
dren ; fortunately, Shakespeare has so moulded his story that this 
difficult question is entirely eliminated. The Montague's voice is 
recognised, and an attempt made to eject him from the Capulet 
house ; the head of the house forbids this infraction of hospitable 
honour, and in the altercation^ JuHet's father speaks thus of 

Romeo : 

He bears him like a portly gentleman ; 
And, to say truth, Verona brags of him 
To be a virtuous and well govern'd youth. 

No higher testimonial could be given by any father to the worthi- 
ness of a suitor for his daughter's hand. It appears then that the 

1 1. V. 56-90. 



54 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

barrier to the union of the lovers is not parental authority, but the 
unrighteous feud. And that this is a true reading of the situation 
we may call for confirmation a witness from the story itself. The 
Friar is not only a man of the highest character, but (according to 
the religious ideas of the time) the keeper of the consciences of 
Montagues and Capulets alike. That he understands the union of 
Romeo and Juliet to be barred by no impediment but that of the 
feud Father Laurence shows by his consenting secretly to perform 
the wedding ceremony ; and he does it on the highest grounds, 
in the hope that the union of the children may come to heal the 
feud of the parents.-^ 

Thus the first stage of the story is complete. A marriage that 
must be hushed up may indeed be called a moral entanglement. 
But in the present case it has been brought about by no error on 
the part of Romeo and Juliet ; its secrecy is the necessary result 
of a situation of affairs for which they are in no way respon- 
sible. 

There is an accession of entanglement when, after the secret 
marriage has been consummated, the husband is banished. Care- 
less readers of the play have spoken of Romeo as banished for 
duelling. Nothing could be more unjust ; it would be nearer the 
truth to say that he is driven into exile for an attempt at peace- 
making. 

This section of the story brings to the front two special per- 
sonaHties. Mercutio is unconnected with the two warring fac- 
tions, and is kinsman to the prince. He is clearly a leading figure 
in Verona society. He appears to be a man of exuberant vitaHty ; 
brimming over with riotous fancies, speaking " more in a minute 
than he will stand to in a month " ; restless for the cut and thrust 
of wit, and the cut and thrust with weapon. His irrepressible 
activity is kept within bounds of good humour — with one excep- 
tion : he has a chronic contempt for one who seems his artificial 
anti-type, Tybalt, who takes current slang for wit, and makes 
duelling an end in itself. 

^11. iii. 90. 



INNOCENCE AND PATHOS 55 

O, he is the courageous captain of complements. He fights as 
you sing prick-song, keeps time, distance, and proportion ; rests 
me his minim rest, one, two, and the third in your bosom : the 
very butcher of a silk button, a duellist, a duellist ; a gentle- 
man of the very first house, of the first and second cause : ah, 
the immortal passado ! the punto reverso ! the hai ! . . . The 
pox of such antic, lisping, affecting fantasticoes ; these new 
tuners of accents ! ^ 

Mercutio and Tybalt, with lesser persons, make up an atmosphere 
of social recklessness, which enables us to measure how much of 
moral resistance there is when Romeo refuses a challenge. The 
circumstances are these. Tybalt, restrained from turning Romeo 
out of Capulet's house, is the next day roaming over the city 
to seek him : Mercutio has met Tybalt and is holding him in 
check.^ By perverse fortune, at this moment Romeo comes upon 
them; Tybalt ghdes from Mercutio's sword point to accost the 
Montague, and hurls at him in pubHc the word ' villain.' But the 
husband of Juliet holds down his anger, and gives a dignified 
answer. Mercutio is shocked that a gentleman wearing a sword 
should not have drawn in a moment to avenge an insult; yet, 
good-humouredly, Mercutio with his ready weapon forces Tybalt 
to encounter with himself instead of Romeo. At once Romeo 
calls upon the bystanders to separate the two : he and Benvolio 
strike down the weapons of the combatants. Thereupon Tybalt 
by " an envious thrust " under the arm of Romeo gives a mortal 
wound to Mercutio. Romeo has seen a friend, interfering to save 
him, murdered ^ before his eyes ; he sees Tybalt furious for more 
blood and in triumph. Then he does draw his sword; he is un- 
happily too successful ; Tybalt falls, and Romeo is subject to the 
doom of banishment. 

In what has our hero done wrong? It is true that our wiser 

1 II, iv. 19. 2 HI. i. 38, and whole scene. 

8 The word is justified by a comparison of III. 1. 173 with line 108 of the same 
scene, and the stage direction at line 94. Compare also Romeo's words in lines 
I 14-6. 



56 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

modern life has provided for such a contingency by its institution 
of the poUce. But, when we are dealing with general conceptions 
of right and wrong, it is to be remembered that moral indignation 
is part of the whole duty of man. The prince who condemns 
Romeo accepts the description of his offence as no more than 
*' concluding but what the law should end, the life of Tybalt."^ 
Romeo is banished, not on account of the quality of his act, but 
because of the arbitrary decree against street fighting drawn from 
the prince by feuds of Montague and Capulet. This second stage 
of the entanglement may be thus summed up : accident has brought 
Romeo into a situation, in which his self-restraint, and attempt at 
peacemaking, have subjected him to a doom instituted on account 
of that factious violence which Romeo has just been resisting. 

The final phase of the movement is ushered in by the suit of 
Count Paris for the hand of JuHet. The offer is at once accepted 
by her father, and — such is the strange entanglement of events — 
the death of Tybalt has made it possible for Capulet to dispense 
with ceremony, and appoint a quiet wedding for a date within the 
week of the proposal.^ There is no time to concert measures with 
Romeo. What is Juliet to do? Will it be suggested that she 
might confess all to her parents, relying on the fact that a mar- 
riage is a thing which cannot be undone? But we must remember 
the type of parent in the case. When Juhet shows the first sign 
of resistance to the idea of wedding within a day or two a man who 
has never asked her for her love, her mother in a moment takes 
fire, and the father no less quickly catches the heat.^ 

Capulet. Soft! take me with you, take me with you, wife. 

How! will she none ? doth she not give us thanks? 
Is she not proud ? 

Juliet's answer is a model of respect tempering firmness : 

Juliet. Proud can I never be of what I hate ; 

But thankful even for hate, that is meant love. 

1 III. i. 191. 2 in. iv. 23. 8 III. V. 37, and whole scene. 



INNOCENCE AND PATHOS 57 

The father's temper explodes. 

Capulet. Thank me no thankings, nor proud me no prouds, 
But fettle your fine joints 'gainst Thursday next, 
To go with Paris to Saint Peter's Church, 
Or I will drag thee on a hurdle thither. — 

Foul language follows, until even Lady Capulet and the Nurse 
have to interpose. Is confidence possible with parents like these ? 
Lady Capulet was for having Romeo poisoned over in Mantua, 
merely on account of Tybalt's death ; ^ had it become known that 
a union with that hated Montague stood between Juliet and a great 
match, would Romeo's Hfe have been worth an hour's purchase? 

Juhet sees no escape from the entanglement but death. She is 
ready to die, but, with pious self-control, seeks the sanction of the 
Church. This brings out the Friar's magnificent scheme. Friar 
Laurence is not only a strong, calm soul in the midst of a world 
of the passionate ; not only a leading ecclesiastic of the city with 
Capulets and Montagues alike for his penitents ; he further repre- 
sents the mystic science of the primitive time, and knows how, by 
herbal draughts he can compound, to reduce vigorous youth to the 
appearance of a corpse ready for the sepulchre, draughts com- 
pounded with such precision that at the end of two and forty 
hours Juliet shall awake as from pleasant sleep to perfect health. 
And the daring experiment fulfils itself to the exact minute.^ 

But if we admire the scheme of the Friar, what shall we say of 
the heroism of JuHet who carries it out? Unlike the patient of real 
life, whom nature prepares by wasting pain for a welcome release, 
Juliet must in full flush of strong life go through the bitterness of 
death.^ She bids an ordinary ' Good Night ' to her mother and 
nurse, and in low whisper adds : 

God knows when we shall meet again. 

1 III. V. 89. 

2 IV. i. 105, and whole speech; compare V. iii, 257, and whole speech. 

3 Compare the whole scene : IV. iii. The abrupt transitions of thought in Juliet's 
soliloquy must be carefully studied, as indications of changes in the scene she 
imagines. 



58 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

She finds herself — perhaps for the first time in her young life — 
alone at night ; she can hardly restrain herself from calling the 
nurse back. But the dread deed needs solitude. JuHet draws 
from its secret place the Friar's gift, and marks the transparent 
phial with its colourless liquid ; innocent looking as water, can it, 
she wonders, produce such strange effects, and will she not awake 
with morning, to be dragged to the altar ? That at least must never 
be ; and Juliet, taking some stiletto-like ornament of a girl's dress, 
lays it ready, a last resort by which she will be faithful to her mar- 
riage vow. She looks at the phial again, and the opposite thought 
strikes her : what if it is poison ? The idea gains probabiHty ; 
none but the Friar and herself know of the secret marriage, and if 
she were out of the way — but she checks herself, and knows the 
Friar for a holy man. At last the phial is uncorked, and Juliet 
catches a whiff of strange odour. Scientists have noted that nothing 
is more powerful in exciting trains of mental association than the 
sense of smell. As the sickly fumes pervade the atmosphere of 
the chamber Juliet's brain begins to take fire. She catches the 
awful thought of awaking too soon; she realises the strangling 
sensation of the stifling vault, all the terrors of the tomb around 
her, the unearthly shrieks from which passers-by will flee in horror ; 
she fancies herself unable to move without disturbing the dust of 
dead ancestors, ready to dash her brains out with what comes 
nearest and finding this the bone of some forefather. Not ances- 
tors alone ; her quickened mind play recollects Tybalt newly borne 
to the family vault ; she seems to see the white shroud, and hor- 
rible curiosity would peer through to the festering corpse beneath. 
But the tumult of imaginative associations is working itself out to 
the natural cUmax of a Romeo approaching to the rescue. At 
this point the trains of association clash : the white shroud seems 
to rise, as Tybalt seeks the man who spitted him upon his rapier's 
point. Wildly Juliet essays to save her lover, and feels herself 
held back by some strong bar ; in vague confusion she leaps to the 
thought that Hfe is the bar holding her from this scene of the 
sepulchre, and that the phial is the way of escape. 



INNOCENCE AND PATHOS 59 

Stay, Tybalt, stay! 
Romeo, I come ! this do I drink to thee. 

She puts the phial to her lips, and falls insensible. 

The magnificent scheme of the Friar, the heroism of Juliet in 
executing it, all is rendered useless by the accidental detention 
of Friar John.^ This is the hinge of accident on which the whole 
issue turns. As part of Friar Laurence's scheme, a messenger 
must apprise Romeo of what is being done. The careful mes- 
senger knows that travellers may miscarry, and Friar John seeks 
another friar of his order to accompany him for greater security. 
They are starting, when the door of the house is suddenly barred 
by the searchers of the town ; the house is declared infected by 
the plague, and none may leave it. The messenger is helpless, 
and meanwhile the false news ^ is borne to Romeo. His view of 
life is not ours ; long before this Romeo had announced his simple 

creed : 

Do thou but close our hands with holy words : 
Then love-devouring death do what he dare ; 
It is enough I may but call her mine.^ 

With the news of Juliet's death there is nothing left in life for 
Romeo. The Apothecary — evil counterpart to the Friar, with 
mystic drugs that kill instead of mystic dnigs that heal — finds 
the means. Romeo hastens to the sepulchre of the Capulets to 
join his love in her death. 

It is night,* that which was to have been the bridal night of 
Paris j he has come with floral offerings to the tomb of the Capu- 
lets. The pious obsequies are interrupted, and a torch is seen 
cleaving the dark : some cursed robber or insulter of the dead, 
Paris thinks. The thought is confirmed as Romeo, dismissing his 
page, seeks to put him on a false scent, and speaks of descending 
to the bed of death and taking a precious ring from a dead finger. 
Paris can see the figure advance, the torch planted in the ground, 

1 V. ii. 5 ; compare V. iii. 251. ^ H- vi. 6. 

2 V. i. I. * V. iii, whole scene. 



60 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

the mattock raised against the very sepulchre of Juliet ; more than 
this, he recognises the face of a Montague. He leaps from his 
concealment to arrest the felon in the act. It is in vain that 
Romeo seeks to restrain him, and bids him not tempt a desper- 
ate man : by the flickering torchlight swords cross, and again 
Romeo's sword is unhappily successful; Paris lies bleeding to 
death, with his last breath begging to be laid in the tomb with 
Juliet. Then Romeo recalls dim recollections of another suitor ; 
he obeys the dying request, and taking up the body he bears it 
into the sepulchre. But lo ! he seems to see, not a sepulchre, 
rather a glorious lantern^ Ht up with the loveliness of Juliet. 
Romeo had been steeling his heart to endure the dread sight of 
death's defacement ; on the contrary, what he finds is fulness of 
the beauty he loves so well. For the forty-two hours are almost 
expired, and the returning tide of health is nearing its flood point ; 
the pallor of death has passed away, and beauty's ensign is crim- 
son in Hps and cheek. Romeo hangs over the body enamoured ; 
the wonder fills him that death himself should turn amorous, and 
keep Juliet in the dark grave as his paramour. Each moment 
the returning tide of Ufe is gathering fulness : the eyelids are 
lying as light as snowflakes on the longed-for eyes ; the Hps seem 
as if at any moment they might part and let the fragrant breath 
come through. The agony of love is more than Romeo can bear, 
and there is but one way to possess all this beauty. 

O true apothecary ! 
Thy drugs are quick. Thus with a kiss I die. 

Then the forty- two hours have expired ; the returning tide of life 
has reached its flood point. As with a dreamer on the verge of 
waking, Juliet's consciousness is of some place where she ought 
to be, and that she is there ; sound of approaching footsteps and 
a familiar voice strengthen the impression ; she opens her eyes, and 
all is true. 

O comfortable friar ! where is my lord ? 

1 Romeo's own word : V. iii. 84. 



INNOCENCE AND PATHOS 6 1 

A moment later she has taken in the whole scene. In vain the 
Friar seeks to get her away, for the watch is heard approaching. 
Juliet can only feel bitterly that her lover has left her behind. 

churl ! drunk all, and left no friendly drop 
To help me after? 

But there is his dagger, and with this she can find a way of follow- 
ing. So the three He side by side, — Paris, Romeo, Juliet, — and 
the triple tragedy has all been brought about by that accidental 
detention of Friar John. 

The plot of this play has fully unfolded itself; what has been 
its dominant motive? In the dim background of the story, for 
those who care to look for it, may be seen a providence of retri- 
bution : evil has brought forth evil, where the feud of the parents 
has caused the death of the children. This retribution is seen 
balanced by its opposite, for the heroism of Juliet is a good that 
but brings forth evil. But in the foreground, at every turn of the 
movement, we see emphasised the strange work of providence by 
which accident mocks the best concerted schemes of man; pity, 
not terror, is the emotion of the poem. It is accident which has 
brought Romeo and Juliet together, and they have loved without 
sin ; accident has converted Romeo's self-restraint into the entan- 
glement of exile from his bride ; the smallest of accidents has 
been sufficient to turn deep wisdom and devoted heroism into 
a tragedy that engulfs three innocent lives. 

There are certain passages of the play into which have been 
read suggestions of folly and its penalty, but which in truth are 
entirely in tune with the prevailing impression of irresistible cir- 
cumstance. When Juliet says ^ — 

1 have no joy of this contract to-night : 
It is too rash, too unadvised, too sudden ; 
Too like the lightning, which doth cease to be 
Ere one can say, ' It lightens ' : — 

1 II. ii. 117. 



62 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

and Romeo answers — 

I am afeard, 
Being in night, all this is but a dream, 
Too flattering-sweet to be substantial : — 

the two are not making confession of faulty rashness : it is only 
the common thought of new-born love, that it is too good to be 
true. Similarly, when the Friar says to Romeo ^ — 

These violent delights have violent ends . . . 
Therefore love moderately ; — 

he is not blaming, but fearing : his own action shows that this is the 
sense. The Friar justly rebukes the desperate fury of Romeo at 
the sentence of banishment ; ^ but this fault of Romeo does not 
affect the movement of events, for he does not act upon his fury, 
but on the contrary lays it aside, and submits to the counsel of his 
spiritual adviser — the counsel which eventually turns to his ruin. 

On the other hand, it may be said that in this more than in any 
other play Shakespeare comes near to being a commentator on him- 
self, and to giving us his own authority for the true interpretation. 
In the prologue it is the author who speaks : this opening of the 
plot exhibits, not sin and its consequences, but a suggestion of 
entangling circumstance ; when he speaks of the " fatal loins " of 
the parents, the " star-cross'd lovers," and their " misadventured 
piteous overthrows," Shakespeare is using the language of destiny 
and pathos. For what is spoken in the scenes the speakers alone 
are responsible ; yet a succession of striking passages has the effect 
of carrying on the suggestion of the prologue — dramatic fore- 
shadowings, unconscious finger-pointings to the final tragedy, just 
like the shocks of omen that in ancient drama brought out the 
irony of fate. Romeo on the threshold of the Capulet mansion 
has such a foreshadowing. 

My mind misgives 
Some consequence, yet hanging in the stars, 
Shall bitterly begin his fearful date 
With this night's revels, and expire the term 
1 II. vi. 9. 2 in. iii, from 24. 



INNOCENCE AND PATHOS 63 

Of a despised life closed in my breast 
By some vile forfeit of untimely death. 
But He, that hath the steerage of my course, 
Direct my sail ! ^ 

The feeling recurs just as the encounter with swords is entering its 
last phase. 

This day's black fate on more days doth depend. ^ 

A shock of ill-omen visits Juliet, as she watches Romeo descend 
the rope ladder to go into exile. 

God ! I have an ill-divining soul ! 
Methinks I see thee, now thou art below, 
As one dead in the bottom of a tomb.* 

In ominous phrase Lady Capulet's petulance expresses itself when 
her daughter resists the suit of Paris : 

1 would the fool were married to her grave ! * 
Strangely ironic is the language in which Juliet begs for time. 

Delay this marriage for a month, a week ; 
Or, if you do not, make the bridal bed 
In that dim monument where Tybalt lies.^ 

And there is both irony and weird omen in the unnatural elation 
with which Romeo is awaiting the messenger of doom : 

My dreams presage some joyful news at hand . . . 
I dreamt my lady came and found me dead — 
Strange dream, that gives a dead man leave to think! — 
And breathed such life with kisses in my lips, 
That I revived, and was an emperor. ^ 

In passages like these Destiny itself seems to be speaking through 
the lips of the dramatis personse. In their more ordinary speech 
the personages of the play reiterate the one idea of fortune and 

1 I. iv. 106. 3in. V. 54. 5III. V. 202. 

21II. i. 124. 4in. V. 141. 6V. i. I. 



64 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

fate. Romeo after the fall of Tybalt feels that he is " fortune's 
fool." ^ The Friar takes the same view : ^ 

Romeo, come forth ; come forth, thou fearful man : 
Affliction is enamour'd of thy parts, 
And thou art wedded to calamity : 

he sees in the banished husband a prodigy of ill luck,' misfortune 
has fallen in love with him. Juliet feels the same burden of 
hostile fate : 

Alack, alack, that heaven should practice stratagems 
Upon so soft a subject as myself M 

Romeo recognises the slain Paris as " one writ with me in sour 
misfortune's book " ; his last fatal act is a struggle " to shake the 
yoke of inauspicious stars from this world-wearied flesh."* The 
wisdom of the Friar receives the detention of the messenger 
as " unhappy fortune " ; in the final issue of events he tremblingly 
feels how " an unkind hour is guilty of this lamentable chance," 
how " a greater power than we can contradict hath thwarted our 
intents." ^ The note struck by the prologue rings in the final 
couplet of the poem : no moral lesson is read, but the word pathos 
is found in its simple EngUsh equivalent — 

For never was a story of more wOE 
Than this of Juliet and her Romeo. 

1 III. i. 141. 2 HI. iii. I. 

8 Many commentators, and even Schmidt's Lexicon, understand /rar/ii/ as HmicU 
But the context seems decisive for the other sense — terrible to contemplate. 
4 in. V. 211. 5 V. iii. 82, III. 

6 V. ii. 17 ; V. iii. 145 ; V. iii. 153. 



IV 

WRONG AND RESTORATION: THE COMEDIES OF WINTER'S 
TALE AND CYMBELINE 

The present work treats dramatic plot as a revelation of moral 
providence ; the successive plays are microcosms, and some as- 
pect of the universe appears for each as a binding force in which 
the many-sided characters and incidents find their harmony. In 
one play we have thus seen innocence and pathos, in another 
wrong and retribution. But the evil of hfe admits of yet another 
treatment: wrong may find its restoration. Redemption, the 
profoundest of moral principles, is also an ideal of the poet. But 
poetry is not the same thing as theology. Its mission is not to 
unfold a plan of salvation ; but it gives recognition to the work of 
restoration in human life, and clothes this with artistic beauty, 
especially giving to it those touches of balance and symmetry 
which make up so large a part of poetical idealisation. Two 
dramas suggest themselves as special studies of Wrong and Res- 
toration — Winter's Tale and Cymbeline. To the analyst the two 
have much in common. In the bare anatomy of plot the plays 
are bound together by their sixfold basis of structure ; in each 
Shakespeare has borrowed from ancient literature the device of 
the oracle, not an external force governing events, but the empha- 
sis by supernatural revelation of a result otherwise accomplished. 
The very difference of the two poems gives the link of contrast. 
WinteT^s Tale presents wrong and restoration in the simplest form ; 
in Cyjnbeline similar elements of story are seen highly elaborated 
into what is perhaps the most complex of Shakespearean dramas. 

In Winter's Tale the whole wrong is comprehended in the 
passion of Leontes. Not only is this a single thing, but — to do 
F 65 



^ THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

it justice — in the scale of guilt we must rank it low. There are 
wrongs which are infinitely bad when looked at in themselves, but 
which impress us differently if we consider them as revelations of 
the wrong-doer. This is especially true of jealousy. In another 
of Shakespeare's plays we have two notable types of this passion 
side by side : lago's jealousy is the natural outcome of a nature 
wholly depraved ; on the other hand, it is the transparent guile- 
lessness of Othello that makes it possible for lago to work him 
up to his frenzy of suspicion. The jealousy of Leontes is of this 
latter type. If we inquire as to the general character of the 
SiciHan King, apart from the one crisis of his life, three powerful 
witnesses speak for its depth and truth. The tale tells of an ideal 
friendship, like the friendship of David and Jonathan, or Damon 
and Pythias : such friendships can subsist only between true 
natures. In the same direction point the wifely devotion of so 
high-souled a wife as Hermione, and the passionate attachment 
of the counsellor who in the past has had the close intercourse 
of confidential adviser, an attachment bringing Camillo back to 
Sicily after injury and years of exile.^ The outburst of jealousy 
in the play is not villany, but moral disease ; it is a fever fit, and 
moral fevers, like physical, make the greatest ravages in the strong- 
est constitutions. It is noticeable that the person of the play who 
has the best opportunity for observing Leontes uses the language 
of disease. At the first symptom of the King's morbid imagina- 
tion Camillo cries : 

Good my lord, be cured 

Of this diseased opinion, and betimes ; 

For 'tis most dangerous.^ 

When Camillo feels the case hopeless, and has to open the matter 
to PoHxenes his speech is similar : 

There is a sickness 
Which puts some of us in distemper, but 
I cannot name the disease ; and it is caught 
Of you that yet are well.^ 

1 IV. ii. 1-32 ; IV. iv, from 519. 2 i. n. 296. » I. ii. 384* 



WRONG AND RESTORATION 6/ 

Polixenes thinks of using reason to his friend; Camillo knows 

better. 

Swear his thought over 

By each particular star in heaven and 

By all their influences, you may as well 

Forbid the sea for to obey the moon, 

As or by oath remove or counsel shake 

The fabric of his folly. ^ 

Of course, we are responsible for our moral, as for our physical, 
health. The sin of Leontes has been the unguarded heart which 
has allowed jealousy to enter. But once the morbid passion has 
passed beyond a certain point, it is as vain to denounce the further 
outrages of Leontes as it would be to parse the ravings of delirium. 
The origin of the wrong is outside the field of view ; Bohemia's 
long visit has been a period of incubation for the poison germs, 
and the first we see of Leontes is as when by the stethoscope a 
heart disease has suddenly been revealed in an advanced stage. 
At the beginning of the scene" Leontes is still struggling against 
what he feels to be unworthy ; like the honourable man he is, he 
makes such suspicions a reason for urging a longer visit; nay, 
he calls upon his queen to second the invitation. But when the 
responsive eloquence of Hermione has proved successful, the 
bitterness of the husband's heart comes to the surface in words : 

Leont. At my request he would not. 

Leontes recovers himself, and turns to his wife with the most 
graceful of speeches. 

Leont. Hermione, my dearest, thou never spokest 

To better purpose. 
Her. Never? 

Leont. Never, but once . . • when 

Three crabbed months had sour'd themselves to death 

Ere I could make thee open thy white hand, 

And clap thyself my love. 

1 1, ii. 424. 2 I. ii. 



68 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

But the effort is too much for Leontes : ^ he has tremor cordis, his 
heart dances but not for joy. He must turn aside and play with 
his little son. Yet he can reason^ with his 'affection' — the 
Shakespearean word for ' passion ' : 

With what's unreal thou coactive art, 
And fellow'st nothing — 

but this restraining thought suggests its opposite : 

then 'tis very credent 
Thou mayst co-join with something ; and thou dost. 

The King would be alone, and bids the Queen take charge of her 
guest. 

I am angling now, 
Though you perceive me not how I give line. 

The passion of jealousy, indulged, now rushes with full flood.' 

Go, play, boy, play : thy mother plays, and I 
Play too ; but so disgraced a part, whose issue 
Will hiss me to my grave. 

We can see clearly the psychology of jealousy in such cases as 
Leontes and Othello : the thing imagined is so abhorrent to a 
pure soul, that the very shame of it inflames the imagination, and 
suspicions become realities too strong for the discrimination of 
judgment. Leontes no longer hesitates to confide his thought 
to the clear-sighted Camillo ; the thought now spoken in all its 
details, for the purpose of convincing the horrified friend, con- 
vinces beyond recovery the diseased thinker.* Camillo sees that 
he must affect to enter into the plot against Polixenes in order to 
save him. Of course, when the two have fled from Sicily, this 
comes as full confirmation ; all that is seen around Leontes is one 
great conspiracy.^ It is in vain that the King is encountered by 
the injured innocence of the stately Hermione, by the blank 

1 1, ii, from io8. 8 I. ii. 187. 

2 I. ii. 138-46. < I. ii, from 267. 6 n. i. 47. and whole scene. 



WRONG AND RESTORATION 69 

amazement of the courtiers, which Antigonus expresses with a 
blunt force that makes its coarseness pardonable : jealousy is 
a flame that converts obstacles into fresh fuel, and to Leontes 
the lords are so many Wind fools, the queen's guilt has put on 
its natural hypocrisy.^ The little son's illness is announced : it 
becomes fresh evidence. 

To see his nobleness ! 
Conceiving the dishonour of his mother, 
He straight declined. ^ 

The new-born infant is laid before the King — 

. . . the whole matter 
And copy of the father, eye, nose, lip, 
The trick of 's frown, his forehead, nay, the valley, 
The pretty dimples of his chin and cheek ; his smiles : 
The very mould and frame of hand, nail, finger ^ — 

but all this hardens the morbid heart, and Leontes cries to com- 
mit the brat and its adulterous dam to the flames. All this while 
Leontes is conscious of honesty and justice. His second thought 
of having the babe carried by Antigonus to some lonely spot in 
Bohemia, "some place when chance may nurse or end it," is 
meant by the King, and understood by the court, as an appeal to 
providence.* And — to convince others, not himself — the King 
has sent to the infallible oracle : * 

Let us be clear'd 
Of being tyrannous, since we so openly 
Proceed in justice, which shall have due course, 
Even to the guilt or the purgation. 

But when the thunderbolt of the oracle falls,^ even this cannot 
stop the headlong course of jealous frenzy ; 

There is no truth at all i' the oracle : 
The sessions shall proceed. 

1 II. i, from 126. 2 II. iii. 12. « II. iii. 98, and whole scene. 

* II. iii, from 154; compare line 183, and III. iii. 41-6. 

6 II. i. 180, 189; III. ii. 4. 6 III. ii, from 133. 



70 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

The fever has reached the full crisis, when a shock must kill oi 
cure. The shock comes in the announcement, at that very in- 
stant, of the boy's death. 

Apollo's angry ; and the heavens themselves 
Do strike at my injustice. 

The shock repeats itself: for the news seems mortal to the 
fainting queen. Leontes has in a moment recovered his full 
sanity : but it is the crushed helplessness that succeeds when the 
fever crisis has passed. 

Thou canst not speak too much ; I have deserved 

All tongues to talk their bitterest. . . . Prithee, bring me 

To the dead bodies of my queen and son : 

One grave shall be for both ; upon them shall 

The causes of their death appear, unto 

Our shame perpetual. Once a day Til visit 

The chapel where they lie, and tears shed there 

Shall be my recreation : so long as nature 

Will bear up with this exercise, so long 

I daily vow to use it. 

The oracle thus brought to the trial of the queen is the motive 
centre of the play, in which all the Unes of plot meet.^ 

Hermione is chaste ; 

Polixenes blameless ; 

Camillo a true subject ; 

Leontes a jealous tyrant ; 

His innocent babe truly begotten ; 
And the king shall live without an heir. 
If that which is lost be not found. 

The first part of the oracle, clear as a flash of lightning, has laid 
bare at a single stroke the whole wrong of Leontes. It is a six- 
fold woe he has incurred. He has lost the wife he adores ; he 
has lost the friend of his bosom ; he has lost his pretty son and 

1 See below, Appendix, page 350. 



WRONG AND RESTORATION 7 1 

his new-born daughter; he has lost the minister Camillo, with 
whom he had taken Hfelong counsel : and he has lost the loyal 
servant, Antigonus, who so unwiUingly has gone to execute a cruel 
doom. But in its latter clauses the oracle is the dim revelation, 
which can be read only by the light of fulfilment. Latent in its 
mystic phrase is the sixfold restoration : the wife is to be received 
as from the tomb, the friend to be again embraced in Sicilia ; the 
lost babe will reappear a lovely daughter ; the lost son will be 
replaced by a son-in-law who is the image of Polixenes as known 
in his youth. Camillo will return, unable to live without his king ; 
and if Antigonus himself has been caught in the doom of which 
he is minister, it is his widow, the faithful Paulina, to whom has 
been committed the chief ministry of restoration. 

The play divides at its centre : the work of wrong is balanced 
by the working out of restoration. An interval of time, indicated 
by a chorus, allows the babe to grow up into a girl of sixteen ; 
the scene shifts from Sicilia to Bohemia. But these are small 
points in comparison with the total change of spirit which the great 
master of plot suddenly brings over his drama : in a moment we 
find ourselves in a new world. A change from verse to prose 
appropriately ushers in the passage from high life, with grand pas- 
sions and court intrigues, to the remote recesses of the country, 
and the rude pastoral manners in which poetry has always sought 
its golden age. It is a region of homely shepherds and their still 
more clownish sons ; with storms when you cannot thrust a bodkin's 
point betwixt sea and sky, or sunny days in the sweet of the year, 
that set the red blood in winter's pale, while the thrush and jay, 
or lark with tirra-lyra chant, make summer songs. It is a life of 
naive simplicity ; its cares are to follow grumblingly the scared 
sheep, when some " boiled brains of nineteen and two-and-twenty " 
insist on hunting in bad weather ; or to cast up items of groceries 
for the feast, not without the aid of counters. For great events 
we hear of sheep-shearing times and their busy hospitality : with 
the old wife as both dame and servant, welcoming all, serving all, 
" her face o' fire with labour and the thing she took to quench it " ; 



72 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

with Mopsa and Dorcas dancing, or watching the galHmaufry of 
gambols some newly come Satyrs are exhibiting, one of whom, by 
his own report, has danced before the King, while the worst 
" jumps twelve foot and a half by the squier " ; with disguised 
royalties invited in as passers-by, and listening to the songs, or the 
catches of the three-man song-men, or the puritan singing psalms 
to hornpipes. The poetry of this Ufe is the language of flowers : 
how for the reverend visitors there are rosemary and rue, which 
keep seeming and savour all the winter long ; how for middle life 
there are summer growths of hot lavender, mints, savory, marjoram, 
and marigold that goes to bed with the sun and with him rises 
weeping ; how spring and youth have their own daffodils, that 
come before the swallow dares and take the winds of March 
with beauty, or dim violets, or pale primroses that maid-hke die 
unmarried ; the old poetic feud of natural and artificial makes its 
appearance, and critic Perdita rules out the carnations and pied 
gillyvors as nature's bastards.^ So too the rustic world has its 
own type of the marvellous — marvels of ballads : one to a very 
doleful tune, how a usurer's wife was brought to bed of twenty 
money-bags at a burthen ; another ballad of a fish that appeared 
forty thousand fathom above water, and sang against the hard 
hearts of maids : 

Dorcas. Is it true too, think you ? 

Autolycus. Five justices' hands at it, and witnesses more than my 
pack will hold. 

If commerce is to appear at all in this idylHc life, it must come 

dancing in. 

Lawn as white as driven snow ; 
Cyprus black as e'er was crow ; 
Gloves as sweet as damask roses ; 
Masks for faces and for noses ; 
Bugle bracelet, necklace amber ; 
Perfume for a lady's chamber ; 

1 Compare the whole passage (IV. iv. 79-103) , as a most important pronounce- 
ment on critical questions in an unexpected context. 



WRONG AND RESTORATION 73 

Golden quoifs and stomachers, 

For my lads to give their dears ; 

Pins and poking-sticks of steel, 

What maids lack from head to heel : 

Come, buy of me, come ; come buy, come buy. 

Even evil, the inseparable attendant of human life, is seen in a 
softened form. It has flown over many knavish professions and 
settled into ' roguery ' : the word is used in the spirit in which it 
is applied to the nursery, and the name of the rogue Autolycus 
takes us back to Homer, to the primeval simplicity that saw a god 
in Mercury, snapper-up of unconsidered trifles. This Autolycus is 
no highwayman in dread of the gallows ; his revenue is the silly 
cheat, and for the Hfe to come he sleeps out the thought of it. His 
delicacy refuses offered charity from the passer-by who has come 
to his rescue, and, weeping thanks, he leans on his shoulder to 
pick his pocket, and warn him against one Autolycus.^ His merry 
frauds make Honesty a fool, and Trust, his sworn brother, a very 
simple gentleman : ^ under the spell of pastoral poetry they come 
to us as no more than the necessary shading for the bright picture 
of contented simplicity. 

Jog on, jog on, the foot-path way, 

And merrily hent the stile-a : 
A merry heart goes all the day. 

Your sad tires in a mile-a. 

In these surroundings of rustic simplicity, the healing peace of 
nature for the distractions of social life, events are slowly preparing 
the restoration which is to crown the plot. The foundhng grows 
into the lovely Perdita, a shepherdess in outward guise, while her 
foster father — mysteriously to the neighbours — is grown from 
very nothing to an unspeakable estate. The presence of Perdita 
transforms a sheep-shearing feast into an assembly of petty gods, 
herself a Flora, peering in April's front. So thinks the son of 
Polixenes : for the time-honoured machinery of a falcon's flight ^ 

1 IV. iii, from 31. 2 iv. iy. 606. » IV. iv. 14. 



74 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

across her father's ground has brought the shepherd maiden a 
prince for a lover, and in the midst of lowly life he has found his 

perfection. 

What you do 
Still betters what is done. When you speak, sweet, 
rid have you do it ever : when you sing, 
rid have you buy and sell so, so give alms. 
Pray so ; and, for the ordering your affairs, 
To sing them too : when you dance, I wish you 
A wave o' the sea, that you might ever do 
Nothing but that ; move still, still so, 
And own no other function : each your doing, 
So singular in each particular, 
Crowns what you are doing in the present deed, 
That all your acts are queens. ^ 

The obscuring his princely highness in a swain's wearing carries 
back the thoughts of Florizel to the old world, which was ruled by 
gods that scrupled not at lower transformations to win a beauty no 
rarer than his love. Nay, the providence of the present seems an 
accomplice in the innocent intrigue, as we mark the pleasant irony ^ 
by which the prince takes the hand of the disguised visitor, to 
make him a reverend witness of the vows he pours forth, the un- 
conscious son protesting in his father's ear that he will wait for no 
father's consent to so precious an alHance. The explosion of 
royal wrath comes as a harmless thunder, terrifying only the aston- 
ished shepherds and clowns, while roguery delights to mock them 
from horror to horror.^ 

The curses [that shepherd] shall have, the tortures he shall 
feel, will break the back of man, the heart of monster. . . . 
Those that are germane to him, though removed fifty times, 
shall all come under the hangman. . . . He has a son, who 
shall be flayed alive ; then 'nointed over with honey, set on 
the head of a wasp's nest; then stand till he be three 
quarters and a dram dead ; then recovered again with aqua- 

1 IV. iv. 136. 2 IV, iv, from 371. s iv. iv. 431 ; and again from 699. 



WRONG AND RESTORATION 75 

vitae or some other hot infusion ; then, raw as he is, and in 
the hottest day prognostication proclaims, shall he be set 
against a brick-wall, the sun looking with a southward eye 
upon him, where he is to behold him with flies blown to 
death. But what talk we of these traitorly rascals, whose 
miseries are to be smiled at, their offences being so capital ? 

Out of this hubbub of rustic confusion Camillo snatches the con- 
trivance/ which shall restore himself to his loved Sicilia, and which, 
pregnant with more of restoration than he knows, shall make him 
preserver of father as of son, healer for Sicilia' s royal house as 
well as Bohemia's. The process of disentanglement gathers force, 
and the roguery of the story is drawn in to play a part : though 
he is not naturally honest, Autolycus is so sometimes by chance.^ 
With the flying lovers and the pursuing king the scene shifts again 
back to Siciha. In rapid play of incident each knot of the en- 
tanglement is duly untied ; each woe reheved gives space to feel 
those that are left ; passions of penitence, surprise, joyful reunion, 
interchange as wonder succeeds to wonder. The simple clowns 
in their terrible trouble become important personages in court 
excitements ; discomfited roguery has no worse penance than 
to behave humbly to the rustic victims, who receive apologies 

graciously. 

We must be gentle, now we are gentlemen. ^ 

At last the movement of the plot has gone the full round of the 
arch, and the dignity of the opening scenes is paralleled as Leontes, 
with only the one great woe of his life unhealed, kneels in peni- 
tence before the wondrous statue, and sees it descend and grow 
before his eyes into warm hfe and forgiving love. And if Paulina 
is still left in lonely sorrow for her mate irremediably lost, a com- 
forter is at hand in Camillo ; the autumn idyl that unites these 
two — the main contrivers of the disentanglement — is the final 
note in the restoration, and the oracle of lost and found stands 
complete. 

1 IV. iv, from 519. 2 iv. iv. 637-98 ; 732. ^ y. ii. 164. 



^6 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

We saw the wrong of Leontes as moral disease : in what 
followed disease has found healing. In the physiological world 
healing is in the main a process of Nature, though time and human 
skill may assist. So here, we seemed to move a step nearer to 
Nature as we passed from the specialised life of the court to 
pastoral simplicity. When the time enlarged to take in a new 
generation, and sombre pictures of middle life gave place to the 
ever fresh wonder of young love, we could realise how the successive 
generations of mankind have their part in the heahng force of 
Nature, the flooding tide of humanity washing away evil left by the 
ebb. Nor has human aid been wanting to this process of healing, 
skill and patience meeting in Camillo and Paulina. But there is 
more than this. Poetry is not merely dramatised philosophy ; its 
function is to create, but always such creations as appeal to a spec- 
tator's sympathy. Fiction is crowded with sympathetic pictures 
of revenge, of intrigue, of ambitions. Yet nothing in the whole 
world is more beautiful in itself than redemption : in this play 
Shakespeare does poetic service in choosing redemption for his 
theme, and in presenting it with just the beauty of setting that is 
harmonious with it, down to the last touch of perfect balance 
by which the sixfold loss so strangely culminates in a sixfold 
restoration. 



Turning to Cymbeliney we find the same interest of plot, with 
the addition of complexity : tangled wrong here works dramati- 
cally to harmonious restoration. The regular arch has been used 
to illustrate the movement of some of Shakespeare's tragedies, 
where a career seems to rise to a central chmax and as gradually 
decHne ; for the plays of this chapter the movement is the arch 
reversed, and the varied interests sink downward to a lowest depth, 
from which they gradually rise to the level of restoration. As in 
Winter's Tale, Shakespeare uses the" supernatural hght of the 
oracle to read into clearness the intricate workings of provi- 
dence. 



WRONG AND RESTORATION 7/ 

The wrong presented is no longer a single thing, like the jeal- 
ousy of Leontes, but manifold, and emanating from different indi- 
viduals. Here, as elsewhere, the poet's treatment suggests a scale 
of graded wrong, from less to more. We have Blind Wrong : in- 
jury done by one who acts innocently, according to the best light 
he possesses. Then we find what may be called Perverse Wrong : 
plainly and even grievously evil, yet founded on a perverted sense 
of right. Finally, we have conscious and unmitigated Villany, 
yet even here with a difference between the villany that is crafty, 
and the crime that is not less villanous than stupid. Six separate 
wrongs, illustrating degrees of this moral scale, make the sixfold 
complication : the different characters, by natural reaction and the 
working of events, pass down the arch of movement and up to 
what is possible of restoration. 

Cymbeline himself illustrates blind wrong, alike in regard to 
Belarius and to Posthumus. Belarius tells his own story .^ 

My body's marked 
With Roman swords, and my report was once 
First with the best of note : Cymbeline loved me ; 
And when a soldier was the theme, my name 
Was not far off: . . . 

. . . Two villains whose false oaths prevailed 
Before my perfect honour, swore to Cymbeline 
I was confederate with the Romans ; so 
Followed my banishment. 

Similarly, in Posthumus the King banishes an innocent man ; but 
the play enables us to see the clever Queen manufacturing the evi- 
dence which is to deceive her husband, as part of her elaborate 
plot to secure the succession for her son.- It is impossible for one 
placed so high as a King to search out for himself at first hand all 
the affairs in which he has to judge ; he must act on evidence sup- 
plied to him, and Cymbeline acts for the best. But what is the 
sequel? At first we see the deed returning most remarkably on 
the doer ; the rebound of CymbeHne's innocent injuries robs him 

1 III. iii. 55. 2 I. i. 103 ; III. V. 60-5. 



78 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

of his two sons, and then of his daughter. Yet, as the ways oi 
providence gradually unfold and bring the climax, those whom the 
King has injured are led, in the mere passion of battle, to a miracle 
of heroism : Belarius and his foster children are " the old man and 
his sons," taken for angels, who make a Thermopylae of a narrow 
lane, and turn Roman victory into defeat ; while the " fourth man 
in a silly habit who gave the affront with them " was the banished 
Posthumus.^ All unconsciously to himself, without intention on 
their part, the innocent injurer has been delivered by his victims 
in the supreme crisis. 

Analysis is more difficult when we come to that wrong which is 
founded on a perversion of right. Three of the trains of interest 
making up the plot of the play must be referred to this heading. 
The first is comparatively easy. The story of Belarius is a simple 
story of retaliation.^ 

O Cymbeline ! heaven and my conscience knows 

Thou didst unjustly banish me : whereon, 

At three and two years old, I stole these babes, 

Thinking to bar thee of succession, as 

Thou reft'st me of my lands. . . . 

Having received the punishment before 

For that which I did then : beaten for loyalty 

Excited me to treason. 

Revenge, as all moralists will recognise, is merely the high motive 
of justice in distorted form. It is interesting to watch this story 
of retaliation working out. To speak of the hard life of exile in 
savage wilderness to which Belarius has doomed himself seems a 
small point ; the real interest is that not only does the avenger, as 
we have seen, rescue the object of his vengeance, but he rescues 
him unwittingly. It is against his will and striving that the old 
warrior is brought to the battle-field,^ where martial ardour over- 
powers him ; and the force dragging him thither is the youthful 
excitement of the stolen boys, whom Belarius loves as his own, and 

1 V. iii, whole scene. 8 IV. iv, whole scene. 

2 III. iii. 99; compare V. v, from 336. 



WRONG AND RESTORATION 



79 



in whom the inborn nobiiity which he has sought to obscure is 
suddenly asserting itself. 

The wrong of Posthumus is the commonest of moral perversions : 
the false sense of honour that dares not refuse a challenge, what- 
ever be the moral cost implied in its acceptance. It is the per- 
version which is the product of social narrowness and artificiaUty ; 
the duellist dreads the sentiment immediately surrounding him in 
the coterie that has dubbed itself " men of honour," and forgets the 
great world with its balanced judgments and eternal principles of 
right. At the opening of the play ^ disinterested courtiers exhaust 
superlatives in their characterisation of Posthumus as the perfect 
man ; even lachimo, in describing the circumstances of the fatal 
dispute, speaks a like language. 

The good Posthumus, — 
What should I say ? he was too good to be 
Where ill men were ; and was the best of all 
Amongst the rarest of good ones, — sitting sadly, 
Hearing us praise our loves of Italy. . . . This Posthumus 
Most like a noble lord in love and one 
That had a royal lover, took his hint. 
And, not dispraising whom we praised, — therein 
He was as calm as virtue — he began 
His mistress' picture. ^ 

Up to this point Posthumus is innocent, and moreover has depth 
of nature to appreciate the perfection and purity of Imogen. But 
when the challenge is made that even this purity may be conquered, 
Posthumus surrenders to the lower standard of morals around him, 
where virtue can be made a thing of wager and there is not capac- 
ity deep enough to take in perfection. In such an atmosphere, 
zeal to demonstrate to the world his wife's purity, and then punish 
with the sword the self-confessed slanderer, blinds Posthumus to 
the crime he is committing : that to the loyal wife who implicitly 
trusts him he is commending as his noble and valued friend the 
man who comes expressly to assail her.^ The evil thus started 

1 1, i. 17, etc. 2 V. V. 157. 8 Compare the letter : I. vi. 22. 



80 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

on its downward career we can watch round its circle of movement. 
When the false story is told to Posthumus, his unnaturally inflated 
confidence undergoes sudden collapse ; while impartial bystanders 
cry for more evidence, the one most concerned leaps to belief, 
and with passionate paradox embraces the vilest conceptions of 
womankind and sexual honour.^ He soon descends to lower crime, 
and despatches to his servant Pisanio the letter that is subornation 
to murder. This murder being supposed to be accomplished, 
in the latter half of the action Posthumus is seen the prey of bitter 
remorse. While he still credits the false news, he feels that Imogen 
is even yet better than himself.^ 

Gods ! if you 
Should have ta'en vengeance on my faults, I never 
Had lived to put on this : so had you saved 
The noble Imogen to repent, and struck 
Me, wretch more worth your vengeance. But, alack, 
You snatch some hence for little faults ; that's love, 
To have them fall no more : you some permit 
To second ills with ills, each elder worse. 

The remorse expresses itself in action : Posthumus has been 
brought with the nobles of his exiled home to the invasion of 
Britain ; he changes his appearance with the disguise of a Briton 
peasant, that he may at least find his death fighting on the side of 
Imogen's people.^ As we have seen, instead of death he is led to 
prodigies of valour which save Imogen's country and father. 
Posthumus cannot yet forgive himself; he puts on the guise of a 
Roman again, courting capture and death.'' Imprisoned, he has 
leisure for further remorse : ^ 

Most welcome, bondage ! for thou art a way, 

I think, to liberty . . . my conscience, thou art fetter'd 

More than my shanks and wrists : you good gods, give 

The penitent instrument to pick that bolt, 

Then, free for ever ! 

1 II. iv, whole scene, especially 113, 130; II. v. 

a V. i. 8 V. i. 21. 4 V. iii. 75. 6 V. iy. 



WRONG AND RESTORATION S\ 

From expectation of immediate execution Posthumus passes into 
the scene of the denouement ; ^ with its continued shiftings the 
various sides of the story are in his hearing made clear; until 

— as if it were a single stroke symbolising the plot as a whole 

— Posthumus, by a petulant blow struck at the page who is 
the disguised Imogen/ shatters the complex entanglement, and 
brings the discovery in which the whole confusion is harmo- 
nised. 

Of lachimo the wrong would seem too foul to find any pallia- 
tion. Yet even here, in the first inception, we can see perversion 
of right. There is a sort of spurious zeal for truth in the scepti- 
cism that sets itself against enthusiastic faith, and seeks by some 
test of fact to convict it as pretentious boasting. But such scepti- 
cism easily passes into a cynical antagonism to the ideal itself; 
and so it is in the present case.^ 

I make my wager rather against your confidence than her 
reputation; and, to bar your offence herein too, I durst 
attempt it against any lady in the world. 

In such a spirit as this lachimo opens his"* intrigue against 
Imogen. In a moment there comes a sudden reaction : ^ in the 
shame of repulse from a purity he had not had capacity to imagine 
lachimo is carried from cynicism to the passion of revenge. His 
device for procuring the secrets of the bedchamber is revenge as 
against Imogen : but what is it in reference to Posthumus ? There 
is honour among thieves, and the idlest man of pleasure has a vir- 
tuous horror of cheating at cards ; judged by his own shallow 
standards lachimo is descending to the deepest depth when he 
manufactures false evidence with which to win a wager he has 
lost. The after part of the play exhibits lachimo covered with 
shame ; and shame — to our surprise — begets remorse,^ revealing 
a better nature that had been buried but not lost. Brought with 

1 V. iv, from 152. ^ I. iv, whole scene. 

2 V. V, from 227. 4 I. vi, from 32. 

* I. vi : compare 156, 180-210; and II. ii, from 11. 6 V. ii. I. 

n 



^2 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

the other Roman nobles to the British war, lachimo in his first 
onset finds himself discomfited by a peasant. 

The heaviness and guilt within my bosom 
Takes off my manhood : I have belied a lady, 
The princess of this country, and the air on't 
Revengingly enfeebles me ; or could this carl, 
A very drudge of nature's, have subdued me 
In my profession ? 

He is drawn onward in the tangled perplexities of the plot, 
until, at a word of challenge, the cynic pours forth an enthusiasm 
of confession, in which the perfectness of the two against whom 
he has sinned is made clear by the fulness of his self-humiliation.^ 
Besides blind wrong and perverted right the story gives us vil- 
lany unrelieved ; two types of it, the crafty villany of the queen 
and the stupid villany of Cloten. 

That such a crafty devil as is his mother 
Should yield the world this ass ! a woman that 
Bears all down with her brain ; and this her son 
Cannot take two from twenty, for his heart, 
And leave eighteen. ^ 

There is no need to dwell upon the crimes of poison and slander 
by which the queen is intriguing to make a way for her son Cloten 
to the crown ; she becomes dramatically interesting by her rela- 
tion to the reaction of the plot. After all the intrigues have pros- 
pered, at the very last all is lost through the mysterious absence 
of him for whose sake the crimes were perpetrated ; ^ under the 
strain of this mocking fate villany turns against itself.* 

Cymbeline. How ended she? 

Cornelius. With horror, madly dying, like her life ; 

Which, being cruel to the world, concluded 

Most cruel to herself. 

1 V. V, from 141. 8 IV. iii. 2-9. 

2 II. i. 57. * V. V. 23-68 and 244-6a 



WRONG AND RESTORATION 83 

The long train of crimes confessed by the queen follows, and the 
doctor concludes : 

Cornelius. But, failing of her end by his strange absence, 
Grew shameless-desperate ; open'd, in despite 
Of heaven and men, her purposes ; repented 
The evils she hatched were not eflfected ; so 
Despairing died. 

There seems to me to be a fine psychological touch in the shame- 
less-desperate : successful wickedness, mocked at the last moment, 
flies through petulance to suicide ; the craft of Hfelong conceal- 
ment, impotent to hurt, can at least shock by venting its own 
shamelessness. And, in the general working out of events, this 
confession of guilt takes obstacles out of the way of the growing 
disentanglement. It is the same with Cloten and his gross pur- 
poses. The final stroke in his revenge is to adopt the very dress 
of Posthumus with which to assail and ruin Imogen ; ^ in the 
strange turns of circumstance his headless trunk is recognised by 
this dress,^ is wept over and tenderly buried by Imogen herself: 
this pious office, done unconsciously to her intending destroyer, 
brings Imogen in contact with Lucius and the Roman hosts, and 
so draws her into the current of events which in the end will bring 
back to her all she has lost. In both the threads of villany that 
run through the story, we see the irony of death making discom- 
fited villany a link in the chain of restoration. 

Thus complex is the plot of Cymbeline. Instead of some simple 
outburst of passion, far-reaching in its consequences, we here have 
varied types of evil, from unconscious injury to gross crime made 
still fouler by folly. Six distinct personalities are centres of wrong, 
each sufficient for a complete plot : in the providential working 
of events we see blind wrong blindly restored ; retaliation of evil 
unconsciously led to retaliation of good for evil ; perverted right 
— Hke diseases that must become worse before they can become 
better — by sudden reaction growing to conscious wrong, and then 

1 III. V, from 124. 2 IV. ii. 308. 



84 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

led in the course of nature and circumstance to suffering and 
redemption ; while that which is too evil to be itself restored is 
overruled into a means of restoration for others. 

But in Shakespeare symmetry goes hand in hand with com- 
plexity. The sixfold wrong has a sixfold victim : the separate 
trains of evil are drawn into a unity by the way in which they one 
and all strike at Imogen. Through the error of Cymbeline 
Imogen has lost her husband, through the retaliation of Belarius 
she has lost her brothers ; Posthumus's sin robs her of her love, 
and the crime of lachimo robs her of her reputation ; by the 
queen her life is threatened, and the villany of Cloten threatens 
her honour. In the sequel all these are saved or restored, and 
Imogen appears a motive centre for the whole of this many-sided 
plot : in her the hues of complication meet,^ and her sufferings 
are foremost among the forces of resolution. 

The forces that make for restoration in the play of Cymbeline 
also appear sixfold ; in fact they are not different from what we 
may trace in Winter's Tale, or in human life as a whole, but the 
complexity of the plot presents them more clearly to our analysis. 
We mark the suffering innocence of Hermione in the one play and 
Imogen in the other, wifely dignity and sweetness maintaining 
loyalty under the bitterest wrongs ; not only do these sufferings 
work healing remorse in the injurers, but we see clearly the wan- 
derings of the outcast Imogen make links in the chain of events 
which is slowly bringing back happiness. Suffering guilt appears in 
Leontes, in Posthumus and lachimo \ we have already noted how 
actions in which Posthumus and lachimo are expressing remorse 
lead up to changes of fortune. To suffering fidelity is clearly com- 
mitted a ministry of restoration : PauHna's bold stand saves her 
queen, but loses for herself a loved husband ; Pisanio, distracted 
between claims of master and mistress, maintains fidehty at the 
cost of being threatened by the poison of the Queen and the sword 
of Cloten, and even by the suspicions of Imogen herself.^ In both 

1 See below, Appendix, page 351. 
2I.V. 78; III. V. 83; V. V. 238. 



WRONG AND RESTORATION 85 

plays is exhibited what may be called honest intrigue. Camillo 
twice contrives an underhand poUcy; the physician Cornelius 
undermines the mining of the royal poisoner, supplying drugs 
which kill only in appearance : 

She is fool'd 
With a most false effect ; and I the truer 
So to be false with her.^ 

In such cases the weapons of wrong are turned against itself, and 
there is conscious cooperation with the forces of restoration. 

Notably in this play appears Nature as a healing force. In 
Winter's Tale we have seen this conception developed to a 
prominence that cast other forces of restoration into the shade ; 
like fresh air substituted for a confined room came the passage, at 
the centre of the plot, from city to country life. By a similar 
effect, at the exact centre of the play of Cymbeline, as first note of 
the change from compUcation to resolution, we have the cave of 
Belarius amid its Welsh mountains, and the contrast between coun- 
try and court.^ 

Stoop, boys : this gate 
Instructs you how to adore the heavens, and bows you 
To a morning's holy office : the gates of monarchs 
Are arch'd so high that giants may jet through 
And keep their impious turbans on, without 
Good morrow to the sun . . . 
Now for our mountain sport : up to yond hill ! 
Your legs are young : I'll tread these flats. Consider, 
When you above perceive me like a crow, 
That it is place which lessens and sets off: 
And you may then revolve what tales I have told you 
Of courts, of princes, of the tricks in war. . . . 

. . . O, this life 
Is nobler than attending for a check, 
Richer than doing nothing for a bauble, 
Prouder than rustling in unpaid-for silk. 

1 1. V. 4a. 2 III. iii. 



86 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

In all the sequel, though as a single thread intertwining with 
others, we find this interest of open-air Ufe maintained ; side by 
side with scenes of camp and court we get the primitive simplicity 
of outdoor life, the cave and forest, joys of hunting, rustic feasts 
and rural obsequies ; the spirit of the Welsh mountains is seen to 
mould the events that are leading up to the cHmax. Nature 
again is seen in the mystic sympathy that draws the boys of the 
cave to the slim page their guest, so that one of them says : ^ 

. . . The bier at door, 
And a demand who is't shall die, PU say 
* My father, not this youth ' — 

and the supposed father must secretly recognise that the boy speaks 
more naturally than he can know. Above all, the force of Nature is 
manifested in the secret reversion to strain of the royal boys, 
brought up in a rustic Hfe yet reaching after greatness, their 
princely nerves straining to act the deeds they hear of. 

O thou goddess, 
Thou divine Nature, how thyself thou blazon'st 
In these two princely boys ! They are as gentle 
As zephyrs blowing below the violet. 
Not wagging his sweet head ; and yet as rough, 
Their royal blood enchafed, as the rudest wind, 
That by the top doth take the mountain pine 
And make him stoop to the vale. 'Tis wonder 
That an invisible instinct should frame them 
To royalty unlearn'd, honour untaught. 
Civility not seen from other, valour 
That wildly grows in them, but yields a crop 
As if it had been sow'd.^ 

We have already seen how it is this boyish excitement for the war 
that is in the air, and its chances for great deeds, which brings to 
the scene of the crisis the heroes who are to revolutionise the 
course of events. 

1 IV. ii. 22. 2 IV. ii. 169. 



WRONG AND RESTORATION 87 

Suffering innocence, suffering guilt, suffering fidelity, honest 
intrigue, the healing power of Nature — these are forces of resto- 
ration in the story of Cymbeline ; a sixth that mingles with the 
rest and binds them together is the force of an overruling provi- 
dence. We recognise a moral government of the world as we 
note each case of perverted right, as if by natural law, work 
through suffering to its redemption. There is a suggestion of 
providence in the strange irony by which triumphant villany falls 
confounded at the last, and in its fall becomes an instrument of 
restoration. Again, we may fasten our attention upon a single 
device of the plot, the casket of poison. We see this prepared for 
the guilty Queen by the deceiving physician,^ dropped by her in 
the path of Pisanio,^ given innocently by Pisanio to Imogen as a 
charm against the weariness of her journey ; ^ Imogen eats from 
it * and is taken for dead, is buried in the grave of Cloten, awakes ^ 
and recognises the headless body as Posthumus, procures its fitting 
burial with the aid of the soldiers of Lucius,^ and is thus brought 
into the Roman host and into the course of events which are 
moving to the cHmax : as we trace this single point along the line 
of movement we see it as a link binding successive accidents into 
a chain of providential design. The oracle was to antiquity the 
revelation of providence, and two oracles illuminate the present 
plot : the soothsayer's vision ^ — of the Roman eagle winged from 
spongy south to west and lost in the sunbeams — has the tra- 
ditional ambiguity, which gives different interpretations according 
to the prospect of events and their issue ; the other oracular 
message is seen at the close to have predicted correctly with the 
aid of an etymological quibble which reads /ender air as mollis aer^ 
so as 7?wlier, so as woman.^ The mask introduced into the play 
of Cy7nbeline is simply a dramatisation of providence, Jove and 
the gods descending to read the meaning of dark dispensations. 
It may be a question how much of this mask is genuine. But as 

^ I. V. 33- * IV. ii. 38. 7 IV. ii. 346 ; V. V. 467. 

2 I. V. 60, etc. 5 IV. ii, from 291. 8 v. v, from 426. 

3 III. iv. 190. 6 IV. ii, from 353. 



8S THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

it stands it unites with other parts of the play in that which, more 
than anything else, emphasises the providence underlying the whole 
plot — the emergence from time to time of great principles of 
moral government. When to Pisanio the drift of events is at its 
darkest he is made to appeal to a higher power : 

The heavens still must work. 
And again, 

All other doubts by time let them be clear'd : 
Fortune brings in some boats that are not steer'd.^ 

The deity of the mask gives comfort against the " mortal acci- 
dents " that have befallen Posthumus : 

Whom best I love I cross ; to make my gift, 

The more delayed, delighted. . . . 

He shall be lord of lady Imogen, 

And happier much by his affliction made.^ 

And in the sorest strait to which Imogen is brought in her wander- 
ings words are spoken to her which may well stand as foundation 
principle of the whole plot : 

Some falls are means the happier to arise.* 

1 IV. iii. 41, 45. 2 V. iv. loi. * IV. ii. 403. 



THE LIFE WITHOUT AND THE LIFE WITHIN: THE MASK- 
TRAGEDY OF HENRY THE EIGHTH 

The play of Henry the Eighth stands unique among the Shake- 
spearean dramas in regard to its literary form. It is not one of 
the series of histories ; it has no resemblance to comedy ; the 
term tragedy does not fully express it. In exact classification it 
is historic tragedy interwoven with court mask. And justice must 
be done to both the constituent elements before the richness of 
the poem can fully be appreciated. 

The mask or pageant — I am not aware that the line of 
demarcation between the two has ever been drawn precisely — 
played a much more prominent part in Elizabethan life than 
would appear from the traces left in permanent literature. The 
terms cover a great variety of productions, from the extemporised 
procession greeting a royal personage or a returning hero, to the 
exquisite masks of Ben Jonson, with their complex structure — of 
opening, disclosure of the music, disclosure of the maskers, dances, 
revels, close, and interrupting antimasks — all the fine arts cooperat- 
ing in a single spectacle. The common element in these various 
kinds of composition is the dance or procession of persons in 
costume, the movement being not less symboHc than the costume. 
One further point is essential : the mask or pageant is always a 
glorification of some personage or some cause; either the tribute 
is paid by the general character of the spectacle, or — as so often 
in Ben Jonson's masks — a compliment is sprung upon us as a sur- 
prise, ingeniously fitted into some detail of the action. A modern 
charade presents successive scenes, each embodying a syllable of a 
particular word : to guess the key word is not more necessary to 

89 



90 



THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 



the charade than to emphasise the compliment is essential to the 
mask. 

In this way the play of Henry the Eighth is in part a court mask, 
paying honour to Queen Elizabeth^ through her mother Anne 
Bullen. Three out of the five acts are crowned with elaborate 
spectacles, presenting with pageantry and splendour successive 
stages in the rise of Anne : her first meeting with Henry, her 
coronation as queen of England, and — what for the immediate 
purpose must be regarded as a still higher climax — the christening 
of her babe Elizabeth. But at this point a difficulty arises. As a 
matter of common historic knowledge, the elevation of Anne 
Bullen was at the expense of Queen Katherine, the reigning con- 
sort being divorced and relegated to obscurity in order to make 
way for her maid of honour. Now Katherine was the mother of 
the late Queen Mary ; and matters of this kind must be delicately 
handled in court spectacles. 

To meet this difficulty the author (or authors) of the play have 
fallen back upon an idea which enters deeply into human life, and 
seems to be a prominent idea in the philosophy of Shakespeare. It 
is difficult to express this conception by any term not open to objec- 
tion ; I am here calHng it the antithesis of the Outer and the Inner 
life. The life without is the common Hfe, into which each individual 
enters with other individuals, having his share in general aims and 
activities ; it is life in the objective. The life within is the subjec- 
tive attitude to things : each individual is himself a microcosm, all 
that appears in the universe is regarded from the point of view of 
his own personaHty. The distinction is not simply that between 
outer actions and inner motives ; of actions and motives alike it 
may be asked whether they have their reference to the common 
world without or to the individual life within. To take a simple 
illustration. We have before us a painted picture, say, of St. George 
and the Dragon ; we see the figure of a knight in armour riding, 

1 In the eulogistic climax (V. v, from 40) James I is associated with Elizabeth ; 
but this savours of a revision with a view to performance during his reign ; there is 
no other connection of the King with the language or structure of the play. 



THE LIFE WITHOUT AND THE LIFE WITHIN gt 

lance in rest, against a monster. But the visible picture may per- 
haps admit of more than one interpretation. St. George may be 
a simple warrior, in the ordinary course of a warrior's life facing a 
danger that has arisen. Or, we may imagine that this St. George, 
like the hero of Scott's jFai'r Maid of Perth, has been born into 
the ranks of chivalry with the physical constitution of a coward ; 
that by supreme moral resolution he has determined to force him- 
self to do all that other warriors do, and he has sought out the 
dragon as a desperate danger that will furnish stern discipline for 
his shrinking nerves. The one interpretation makes the picture 
an incident of the world without, the other an incident of the 
world within. 

This conception of the Outer and Inner life — or, as it has some- 
times been called, this antithesis of Doing and Being ^ — has appli- 
cation all over the field of morals. It enters into the analysis of 
individual character. One man may be great in doing, supreme 
in power and resource as regards the activities of external life, 
while in the sphere of being and introspective consciousness he 
may show nothing but bewilderment and lack of insight : such is 
Macbeth. Another, like Hamlet, may be at home in self-analysis 
and all that belongs to the roots of action, and yet show only un- 
certainty and hesitation when he comes to act. Or the distinction 
of the two lives may appear in another way. We talk of success 
and failure, of the rise and fall of historical personages. But what 
is success in the external life may be failure in the life within : a 
position of external pomp and dignity may be obtained by a moral 
sacrifice which plunges the world of being into ruin. Or to the 
eyes of all without there may be a fall : the hfe within is conscious 
of a rise and an expansion in spiritual dignity. It is in the latter 
form that the application of the antithesis may be made to the play 
of Henry the Eighth. The necessities of the story involve the deg- 

1 Compare an admirable discourse by James Martineau in his Endeavours after 
the Christian Life, page 354. The antithesis is applied to the play of Macbeth in 
my Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist, Chapter VII; compare also Chapter VIII 
of the same work. 



92 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

radation of Queen Katherine ; historic fact makes it possible to 
present this as a fall only in the outer life, while in the life within 
there is elevation and rising dignity. Thus to the pageants pre- 
senting the career of Anne Bullen there are added two of which 
Katherine is the centre ; the one displays the deposition of a queen 
from her splendid station, the other is a vision of angels, betoken- 
ing with spiritual splendour the elevation of Katherine as a saint. 

The elements of the play, so far as it is a mask, are now com- 
plete. What the reader of Henry the Eighth may easily under- 
estimate, while he is merely reading, gains its full proportion to 
the whole when adequate stage setting makes appeal to the eye. 
Each of the five acts culminates in some pageant ; ^ the three acts 
visibly presenting steps in the rise of Anne — the first meeting, the 
coronation, the christening — are separated by the two in which 
spectacular effect suggests the fall of Katherine, a fall which is the 
elevation of a saint.^ 

The first act ends with the revels of York Place.^ We have a 
brief glimpse of court ladies and free-tongued noblemen making 
merry at the banquet, Cardinal Wolsey encouraging them from 
under the canopy of state ; to the sound of drums and trumpets a 
troop of maskers interrupt — shepherds from afar, who have left 
their flocks to gaze on English beauties ; with the readiness of 
court functions the banquet-hall is transformed into a ballroom, 
and the revels proceed gayly ; at the proper moment for the com- 
pliment the Cardinal is impressed with the thought that one of 
these maskers is more worthy than himself of the seat of honour ; 
the King unmasks, banters the churchman at the fair company he 
keeps, and eagerly inquires the name of the lady with whose charms 
he has been smitten ; all resolve to make a night of it. The whole 
design of the festivity has been to bring together the King and the 
lowly beauty who has just come to court. In the second act pomp 
and pageantry are put to the strangest of uses — to adorn proceed- 

1 The coronation pageant, which serves as crowning spectacle to Act III, comes 
at the commencement of Act IV. 

2 See below, Appendix, page 369. 3 i. iv. 



THE LIFE WITHOUT AND THE LIFE WITHIN 93 

ings of a divorce court.^ Bands of music usher in processions, 
each more dignified than the preceding ; the bewildered eye must 
take in gowned doctors acting as secretaries, archbishop and at- 
tendant bishops arranging themselves as in consistory, officers and 
nobles bearing aloft symbols — of purse and great seal and cardi- 
nal's hat, of silver cross to suggest the spiritual, silver mace the 
temporal functions of the court, and silver pillars to symbolise the 
cardinal judges as pillars of the church ; nobles and personages of 
the court make up the crowd ; the scarlet majesty of Rome sits to 
judge, and for the parties to the suit the proud crier can summon 
into court a crowned king and queen. Yet the whole is under- 
stood to be no more than the spectacular setting proper for the 
deposition of an innocent queen from her high estate. In the 
third act Anne has risen to the throne, and this is followed by 
the pageant of coronation,^ for which state ceremony reserves its 
supreme efforts of emblematic spectacle. We see the procession 
of ermined judges, white-robed choristers, musicians ; Mayor of 
London with the quaint symbols of the city. Garter in his gilt cop- 
per crown and the mystic devices of heraldry ; nobles with sceptres 
and demi-coronals and wands of office, each in gorgeous vestments 
reserved for this one occasion ; under a canopy, which is the privi- 
lege of the Cinque-ports to carry, walks the exquisite Queen in 
richest adornments, bishops attending, and a proud duchess bear- 
ing her train : all that the stage can afford of pomp is concentrated 
on the spectacle, and when its limits have been reached the effect 
is carried on by narrative describing the scene within the abbey. 
In the fourth act we have returned to Katherine, and pageantry 
becomes supernatural vision ; ^ the dark sick chamber is illuminated 
with mystic light, and white-robed angels with faces of gold move 
in rhythmic dance around the sleeper, holding crowns of triumph 
over her head, and bowing low as they mutely proclaim the eleva- 
tion of a saint to heaven. The fifth act has for climax the christen- 
ing of the Queen's babe."* But here, lest we might tire with the 
monotony of pomp, a variation is happily contrived. There is all 
III. iv. 2 IV. i. 8 IV. ii. 4 V. iv and v. 



94 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

that is required of sounding trumpets, heralds, civic functionaries, 
and marshals, duchess godmother under canopy borne by four 
nobles, and ladies filling up the crowd. But the procession of 
state is threatened with being jostled out of all order by the 
crowds that fill the palace yard : knaves from the kitchen, red- 
nosed artisans, apprentices from the Strand rallying to the cry of 
* clubs,' files of boys ready to shower pebbles, and every other type 
of city life, all pressing on till the gates are giving way, and the 
sweating porter with his men see no way to keep the crowd back 
unless they sweep them down with cannon. With this touch is 
prettily suggested the overpowering popularity of the new-born 
Elizabeth. 

But the play is historic tragedy as well as mask : the interweav- 
ing of the two constituent elements is a triumph of structural 
skill. The effect of the mask just described, we have seen, rests 
upon the contrast of outer and inner life, bringing out how that 
which is a fall in the external world may be a rise in the sphere 
of the spiritual. The same idea binds together the different parts 
of the tragic matter. Four historical personages in succession be- 
come centres of interest, and for each there is tragedy in its sim- 
plest sense — the fall from an exalted position.^ 

Think ye see 
The very persons of our noble story 
As they were living ; think you see them great, 
And followed with the general throng and sweat 
Of thousand friends ; then in a moment, see 
How soon this mightiness meets misery.'^ 

But in each case the treatment brings out the contrast of external 
world and individual life ; in each case we see, on the one side of 
the turning-point, external power and splendour ; on the other side 
a humiliation, which nevertheless appears as exaltation in spiritual 
dignity and beauty. 
The first of the four personages is Buckingham. In the open- 

1 See below, on the meaning of tragedy, pages 187-188. 

2 Prologue, line 25. 



THE LIFE WITHOUT AND THE LIFE WITHIN 95 

ing scene Buckingham appears in a position of exalted rank and 
social power : he voices the old nobility of England, scorning the 
upstart favourite. Not pride of birth alone, but supreme wisdom 
and unsurpassed eloquence have made him "the great duke." 
The conversation turns upon the Field of the Cloth of Gold, and 
Buckingham bitterly inveighs against the presumptuous insolence 
that has lavished upon spectacles empty of results treasures dearly 
bought, and has disposed the too servile nobles according to the 
individual pleasure of a parvenu. Where others tremble before 
the mighty cardinal, Buckingham faces him with disdain for dis- 
dain ; brother nobles speak words of caution, but Buckingham 
blurts out in plain language what others think ; he will expose to 
the King what he calls " a kind of puppy to the old dam treason," 
the way in which the holy wolf or fox has imperilled the costly 
French alliance in order to intrigue secretly with the emperor, 
thus buying and selling the royal honour. But before he can 
move a step, Buckingham feels the hand of arrest on his shoul- 
der : as the names of accusers are spoken the whole secret plot is 
visible to him at a glance, and he knows the end from the beginning. 

I am the shadow of poor Buckingham. 

We are to see the ruined hero a second time ^ when all is ac- 
comphshed. We hear described by eye-witness the scenes of 
the trial : how, pleading " not guilty," Buckingham alleged many 
sharp reasons to defeat the law — in vain ; how he demanded to 
be confronted with the witnesses, and found himself unable to fling 
their accusations from him ; how his peers found him guilty of high 
treason, and he spoke much and learnedly for life, but all in vain. 

When he was brought again to the bar, to hear 
His knell rung out, his judgement, he was stirr'd 
With such an agony, he sweat extremely, 
And something spoke in choler, ill, and hasty : 
But he fell to himself again, and sweetly 
In all the rest show'd a most noble patience. 

1 II. i. 



96 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

It is the last two lines that convey the crisis of the incident : in 
the shock of ruin a character emerges, as if from under eclipse, 
a character of patient dignity, fairness to foes and tenderness to 
friends. The fallen nobleman is seen in the procession of death, 
the axe's edge turned towards him. 

All good people, 
You that have thus far come to pity me, 
Hear what I say, and then go home and lose me. 
I have this day received a traitor's judgement, 
And by that name must die : yet, heaven bear witness, 
And if I have a conscience, let it sink me. 
Even as the axe falls, if I be not faithful ! 
The law I bear no malice for my death ; 
'T has done, upon the premises, but justice : 
But those that sought it I could wish more Christians. 

We have the calm rectitude that will be just to itself, but no less 
just to its foes. No false humility shall sue for the king's mercy, 
yet injury has no effect upon loyalty. 

My vows and prayers 
Yet are the king's, and, till my soul forsake, 
Shall cry for blessings on him : may he live 
Longer than I have time to tell his years ! 
Ever beloved and loving may his rule be ! 
And when old time shall lead him to his end. 
Goodness and he fill up one monument ! 

The victim feels an exaltation beyond that of his triumphant 

enemies. 

Yet I am richer than my base accusers, 

That never knew what truth meant : I now seal it ; 

And with that blood will make 'em one day groan for't. 

Yet Buckingham is no stoic, dying in stern independence : the 
tenderness that is in him yearns for supporting friendship. 

You few that loved me. 
And dare be bold to weep for Buckingham, 
His noble friends and fellows, whom to leave 



THE LIFE WITHOUT AND THE LIFE WITHIN 97 

Is only bitter to him, only dying, 
Go with me, like good angels, to my end ; 
And, as the long divorce of steel falls on me, 
Make of your prayers one sweet sacrifice, 
And lift my soul to heaven. 

As we view the scene we forget to moralise about arbitrary tyranny 
and resistance to oppression : what engrosses us is a transforming 
revolution in a great personality. 

The second of the four centres of interest is Queen Katherine. 
Her name has become forever associated with spotless wifehood 
and injured dignity. Yet in the earlier scenes she appears before 
us in a position of lofty exaltation and external power. When she 
enters the council chamber as a suitor,^ the King, secretly conscious 
of failing faith, raises her from her knees with what is more than 

ceremony. 

Half your suit 

Never name to us ; you have half our power : 
The other moiety, ere you ask, is given ; 
Repeat your will and take it. 

Katherine is a mouthpiece for the oppression of the people 
caused by the Cardinal's exactions, under which the back is sacrifice 
to the load, and cold hearts freeze allegiance : Henry is indignant, 
and then and there the Cardinal is ordered to recall his unlawful 
act. Still more impressive appears the lofty position of Katherine 
in the incident of the divorce court.^ The whole power of the 
kingdom, in alliance with Rome that claims kingship over kings, 
is concentrated upon an attempt to undo her. Where her part in 
the programme begins, she thrusts aside the role assigned her, and 
kneeling before the King and the husband speaks the language 
of simple directness, urges the plea of spotless reputation and con- 
jugal bliss blessed by offspring, appeals to the famous king-craft 
that contrived the alliance : the fickle Henry for a moment is en- 
tirely won. The Cardinal in alarm interposing, she turns upon 
him with untempered indignation. 

1 1, ii. 2 II. iv. 



98 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

I do believe, 
Induced by potent circumstances, that 
You are mine enemy, and make my challenge 
You shall not be my judge : for it is you 
Have blown this coal betwixt my lord and me : 
Which God's dew quench ! Therefore I say again, 
I utterly abhor, yea, from my soul 
Refuse you for my judge ; • . . and here 
Before you all appeal unto the Pope. 

Katherine sweeps with dignity out of the court, and refuses to 
return : in a single moment the elaborate plot has fallen discon- 
certed. 

This is the highest point of exaltation for Katherine ; her 
humiHation is not a sudden catastrophe, but rather a slow thrust- 
ing down step by step.^ Like some noble thing standing at bay, 
the Queen is driven from point to point by irresistible force. 
Advanced in Hfe, with faded beauty, all the fellowship she can 
hold with the King being her obedience, how can she prevail 
against a passion excited by a youthful beauty? how can one 
woman's wit stand against consummate craft acting upon a royal 
power longing to be convinced ? Katherine can but wrap herself 
in her virtue, fold after fold, as she withdraws herself into the 
depths of the inner life. To the last there is no compromising the 
queenly dignity she claims by sacred right of marriage ; ^ she does 
not cease to unmask the " cardinal vices " that would hypocritically 
pass for " cardinal virtues." ^ But she is alone against a world. 

Shipwreck'd upon a kingdom, where no pity. 
No friends, no hope ; no kindred weep for me ; 
Almost no grave allow'd me : like the Hly, 
That once was mistress of the field and flourish'd, 
ril hang my head and perish.^ 

She subdues herself to counsel with her foes ; * she invokes the 
old love to seek protection for the fortunes of her child and her 

1 Compare III. i, and IV. ii. « III. i. 103. 

2 E.g. IV. ii. from 100. ^ III. i. i49- '^ HI. i. 181. 



THE LIFE WITHOUT AND THE LIFE WITHIN 99 

poor attendants ; ^ she welcomes even the iaithful chronicler recall- 
ing the forgotten virtues of the Cardinal vi^ho has ruined her.^ Her 
unstained self has become the whole world in which she now lives 
and moves. 

Good Griffith, 
Cause the musicians play me that sad note 
I named my knell, whilst I sit meditating 
On that celestial harmony I go to. 

But the world within extends to a region which the stage can touch 
only in symbol ; and in unearthly light of vision glory we see the 
discrowned queen prepared for coronation beyond the grave. 

It is however Wolsey in whom the interest of the history mainly 
centres. There is no need to dwell upon the unparalleled exalta- 
tion and power of the famous Cardinal during the first half of the 
story : how the commons groan under his exactions ; the nobles 
hate yet dare not speak, or if they resist are crushed ; how France 
and Spain bid against one another for the influence of the minister, 
and are both used to make capital for his own private designs upon 
the papacy. In the change of fortune that comes at the height 
of Wolsey's greatness both nemesis and accident concur. The 
scruples of conscience about the legality of the marriage with 
Katherine are of course only the cover to the real bait with which 
the Cardinal is angling for the King. 

Chamberlain. It seems the marriage with his brother's wife 

Has crept too near his conscience. 
Suffolk. No, his conscience 

Has crept too near another lady.^ 

The churchman and cardinal is using the beauty of a young girl to 
turn the King's thoughts from an elderly wife, and dispose him to a 
second marriage ; Wolsey will have the chance of negotiating with 
some great power for a royal alHance, and will know how to snatch 
his own advantage out of diplomatic bargaining.* But the engineer 

1 IV. ii, from 127. 8 u. ji. 17, 

^ IV. ii. 69. 4 in. ii. 85-90, 94-104. 



lOO THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

is hoist with his own petard : Henry is not only smitten with Anne's 
beauty, but will marry herself and no one else. Wolsey has just 
realised, in profound meditation, how his scheme has recoiled upon 
himself; lost in thought he stands some time before he is aware 
of the King's presence ; he plunges into apologies, but, with the 
famous frown, the King thrusts papers into his hand.^ 

Read o'er this ; 
And after, this : and then to breakfast with 
What appetite you have. 

In a moment Wolsey seizes the situation : ^ by unthinkable accident 
he has handed to the King, in a bundle of various state papers, his 
own private note of his ill-gotten wealth, and worse still, his plan 
of counterworking against the King's darling project of the divorce. 
For a moment the fallen minister makes a fight,^ as malignant 
courtiers crowd around to triumph over him. 

Surrey. Now, if you can blush and cry ^ guilty,' cardinal, 

You'll show a little honesty. 
Wolsey, Speak on, Sir ; V 

I dare your worst objections : if I blush, 

It is to see a nobleman want manners. 

But, left alone, Wolsey reahses that all is over.* 

Farewell, a long farewell, to all my greatness! 
This is the state of man : to-day he puts forth 
The tender leaves of hopes ; to-morrow blossoms, 
And bears his blushing honours thick upon him ; 
The third day comes a frost, a killing frost, 
And, when he thinks, good easy man, full surely 
His greatness is a-ripening, nips his root, 
And then he falls, as I do. I have ventured. 
Like little wanton boys that swim on bladders. 
This many summers in a sea of glory, 
But far beyond my depth : my high-blown pride 

1 IIL ii. 85-203. 3 in. ii. 228-349. 

2 III. ii, from 204. * III. ii. 350. 



THE LIFE WITHOUT AND THE LIFE WITHIN lOI 

At length broke under me and now has left me, 
Weary and old with service, to the mercy 
Of a rude stream, that must for ever hide me. 
Vain pomp and glory of this world, I hate ye : 
I feel my heart new open'd. O, how wretched 
Is that poor man that hangs on princes' favours ! 
There is, betwixt that smile we would aspire to, 
That sweet aspect of princes, and their ruin. 
More pangs and fears than wars on women have : 
And when he falls, he falls like Lucifer, 
Never to hope again. 

I feel my heart new opened : the shock of ruin that has quenched 
for Wolsey the glory of external state has rekindled the life within. 

Never so truly happy, my good Cromwell. 

I know myself now ; and I feel within me 

A peace above all earthly dignities, 

A still and quiet conscience. The king has cured me, 

I humbly thank his grace ; and from these shoulders, 

These ruinM pillars, out of pity, taken 

A load would sink a navy, too much honour.^ 

From servants weeping to leave so noble and true a master,^ from foes 
seeking to do him bare justice,^ we have the other side of Wolsey's 
character, forgotten by men in the glare of his meteor-like rise : how 
from lowly birth he had climbed to honour, full of sweetness to his 
friends, and for his country catching the new spiritual richness of 
the times, and using wealth to found those treasuries of wisdom that 
are to make Christendom speak his virtue forever. From all this 
he has been diverted by the temptations of ambitious opportunities 
such as perhaps never came to a subject before : now he returns to 
his better self, and sees things in their true proportions. 

Cromwell, I charge thee, fling away ambition ; 

By that sin fell the angels ; how can man, then. 

The image of his Maker, hope to win by it? 

Love thyself last : cherish those hearts that hate thee ; 

Corruption wins not more than honesty. 

1 in. ii. 377. 2 in. ii. 422. 8 IV. ii. 



102 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

Still in thy right hand carry gentle peace, 

To silence envious tongues. Be just, and fear not : 

Let all the ends thou aim'st at be thy country's. 

Thy God's, and truth's ; then if thou fall'st, O Cromwell, 

Thou fall'st a blessed martyr.^ 

Men pour cheap sarcasm on the late repentance, that would atone 
with easy contrition for the evil which has missed its prize. But 
thus to speak is to misread the relations of the Outer and the 
Inner life. In the great life of England Wolsey is the ambitious 
self-seeker justly overthrown ; no words of his can buy back a 
place for him, and he knows his destiny to be forgotten, and "sleep 
in dull cold marble, where no mention of him " is to be heard. 
But the spiritual world — as the Parable of the Labourers teaches 
us — has no material divisions of time or scale of retributive 
balance, no barrier against him who enters at the eleventh hour. 
From greatness of soul Wolsey had been diverted by temporal 
aims : to greatness of soul he returns. 

His overthrow heap'd happiness upon him ; 
For then, and not till then, he felt himself. 
And found the blessedness of being little : 
And, to add greater honours to his age 
Than man could give him, he died fearing God.^ 

Yet a fourth personage enters into the plot of the play — 
Cranmer. Here the fall is only threatened ; the averting of ruin 
has the effect of reversing the usual order, and we see Cranmer 
first patient in humiliation, afterwards exalted and triumphant.^ 
The reader must not allow himself to be disturbed by any different 
conception of Archbishop Cranmer to which he may have been 
led by his study of history ; undoubtedly the Cranmer of this play 
is the " good old man," the marvel of more than human meekness 
and forgiveness of injuries ; the common voice says, " Do my 
Lord of Canterbury a shrewd turn, and he is your friend forever." * 
His part in the matter of the divorce has made the archbishop 

1 in. ii. 440. 2 IV. ii. 64. 8 V. i, ii, iii, v. * V. ill. 177. 



THE LIFE WITHOUT AND THE LIFE WITHIN IO3 

the king's hand and tongue. But Henry, swelling with con- 
sciousness of the divine right of kings which was the religion of 
the age, is nevertheless unconsciously swayed to right and left 
by whatever influence gets his ear; the feud of Catholic and 
Protestant is in an acute stage, and Gardiner, successor to the 
leadership of VVolsey, holds Cranmer an arch-heretic, a pestilence 
infecting the land, a rank weed to be rooted out. The King sends 
for the archbishop,^ and regretfully explains the grievous com- 
plaints he has heard, putting as his own thought what others have 
instilled into his mind, that so high-placed a personage as the 
Archbishop of Canterbury must be sent to the Tower before 
accusers will venture to come forward. To Henry's surprise this 
calls forth no resentment. 

I humbly thank your highness ; 
And am right glad to catch this good occasion 
Most thoroughly to be winnow'd, where my chaff 
And corn shall fly asunder : for, I know, 
There's none stands under more calumnious tongues 
Than I myself, poor man . . . 
The good I stand on is my truth and honesty : 
If they shall fail, I, with mine enemies, 
Will triumph o'er my person ; which I weigh not, 
Being of those virtues vacant. 

In vain the King dwells on the dangers that threaten his former 

friend : Cranmer understands, but protests innocence, winning 

Henry entirely. 

Look, the good man weeps ! 

He's honest, on mine honour. 

The King gives the archbishop a signet ring, which in the last 
resort he may use as token of appeal from council to the royal 
judgment. Later on we see Canterbury — in dignity the first 
subject of the land — kept outside the door of the council- 
chamber amid grooms and lackeys;^ when admitted,^ he is 

1 V. i. from 80. ay. ii. 3V. iii. 



104 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

denied his seat at the council, and bitterly denounced by his 
fellow-councillors, as a spreader of pernicious heresies. The 
accused maintains his unvarying self-restraint. 

Love and meekness, lord. 
Become a churchman better than ambition : 
Win straying souls with modesty again, 
Cast none away. 

Only when he is about to be sent to the Tower does Cranmer 
produce the ring and make his appeal. As if he had been listen- 
ing at the keyhole Henry suddenly bursts in at the exact moment, 
frowning the well known frown.-^ 

Good man, sit down. Now let me see the proudest 
He, that dares most, but wag his finger at thee. 

The ready flatteries of Gardiner and others are too thin to hide 
the offences of the councillors. 

Surrey. May it please your grace, — 

King. No, sir, it does not please me. 

I had thought I had had men of some understanding 

And wisdom of my council ; but I find none. 

Was it discretion, lords, to let this man. 

This good man, — few of you deserve that title, — 

This honest man, wait like a lousy footboy 

At chamber-door ? and one as great as you are ? 

After being rated like schoolboys the lords of the council are 
compelled to embrace Canterbury with hypocritical fervour. Then 
Henry lets out the great news — that has had something to do with 
his merciful change of mind — the birth of a babe to his lovely 
queen ; she is immediately to be baptized, and Canterbury shall 
stand godfather. The humility of Cranmer shrinks from the 
honour, but the King insists with a good-humoured jest — 

Come, come, my lord, you'ld spare your spoons ! 

1 V. iii. 114. 



THE LIFE WITHOUT AND THE LIFE WITHIN I05 

So the action passes on to its crowning pageant — the christen- 
ing of the babe Elizabeth, with Cranmer as chief figure in the 
ceremony. A yet higher point of exaltation is reached by him. 
Old age is prophetic, and, the religious ceremony concluded, 
Cranmer is seized with a sudden inspiration,^ beholding in vision 
the greatness reserved for the babe just made a Christian : he 
bursts into an " oracle of comfort." She shall be 

A pattern to all princes living with her, 

And all that shall succeed : Saba was never 

More covetous of wisdom and fair virtue 

Than this pure soul shall be : all princely graces, 

That mould up such a mighty piece as this is, 

With all the virtues that attend the good, 

Shall still be doubled on her : truth shall nurse her, 

Holy and heavenly thoughts still counsel her : 

She shall be loved and fear'd : her own shall bless her ; 

Her foes shake like a field of beaten corn, 

And hang their heads with sorrow : good grows with her : 

In her days every man shall eat in safety, 

Under his own vine, what he plants, and sing 

The merry songs of peace to all his neighbours : 

God shall be truly known ; and those about her 

From her shall read the perfect ways of honour, 

And by those claim their greatness, not by blood. 

Nor shall this peace sleep with her : but, as when 

The bird of wonder dies, the maiden phoenix, 

Her ashes new create another heir 

As great in admiration as herself; 

So shall she leave her blessedness to one, 

When heaven shall call her from this cloud of darkness, 

Who from the sacred ashes of her honour 

Shall star-like rise, as great in fame as she was, 

And so stand fix'd. 

In this long outpouring we have the compliment essential to every 
court pageant, and so the Mask-Tragedy of Henry the Eighth is 
ready for the fall of the curtain. 

1 V. V, from 15. 



I06 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

The antithesis of the outer and the inner life, so notably empha- 
sised in this play of Henry the Eighth^ makes the last of what I 
am treating as fundamental ideas in the philosophy of the Shake- 
spearean drama. The world created by Shakespeare is profoundly 
ethical ; no interest underlying it is greater than the interest of 
human character. In some cases the harmony in a single design 
of all that appears, which is the plot of the play and mirrors the 
providence of the actual world, seems to have for its dominant 
purpose nothing more than the display of some type of character ; 
what happens in Henry the Fifth is not a rise or fall of the hero, 
but serves to display a perfect heroism ; if there is development, 
it is the development of the moon through its phases, not varia- 
tion of the thing, but variation of the hght that allows it to be 
seen. Or, the field of view extends to exhibit alike human char- 
acter and the world of providential government in which it moves. 
In one play the microcosm of providence is viewed on its side of 
retribution ; the deed is seen forever returning rhythmically upon 
the doer, no fate appears that has not been forged by character. 
In another play the plot opens up the strange work of providence 
which we call accident, the providence by which character is mys- 
teriously denied its natural fate ; the emotions of the spectator 
are turned into another channel than retribution, and pure sym- 
pathy finds its discipline. Yet again, we turn to behold the provi- 
dence of mercy ; the forces which make for restoration, alike in 
character and in fate, are displayed at their work, and skilful 
fashioning of plot is permitted to clothe with beauty the lofty 
idea of redemption. But more than all this is required. There 
are two spheres, not one, in which providence may be displayed, 
the life without and the life within ; and that which is ruin in the 
one may be recognised as triumph in the other. This last of the 
root ideas of Shakespeare seems to harmonise all the rest. In 
the light of this distinction between outer and inner life there is a 
sense in which it becomes true that the deed always returns upon 
the doer : he who has done an unjust deed has so far become 
unjust in himself, however in the world without his injustice may 



THE LIFE WITHOUT AND THE LIFE WITHIN 10/ 

bring him glory and security. And though, in the world of the 
external, the long career of righteousness has ended in ruin and 
shame, it is not the less true that the character has wrought out 
its natural fate, for the inner life knows the righteousness as itself 
the highest prosperity. 



BOOK II 

SHAKESPEARE'S WORLD IN ITS MORAL 
COMPLEXITY 

Chapter VI : The Outer and Inner in Application to Roman Life 
Chapter VII : Moral Problems Dramatised 
Chapter VIII : Comedy as Life in Equilibrium 
Chapter IX : Tragedy as Equilibrium Overthrown 
Chapter X : The Moral Significance of Humour 



VI 

THE OUTER AND INNER IN APPLICATION TO ROMAN LIFE 

We have seen that among fundamental ideas in the philosophy of 
Shakespeare is to be reckoned the antithesis of the outer and the 
inner life, interest in the common world and in the life of person- 
ality. In the preceding chapter we have traced a very simple 
appHcation of this idea, in a region of human life where the per- 
sonages affected do not differ greatly from one another, nor from 
us who study them. If the field of view be extended, to take in 
a wider variety and greater complexity of humanity, the antithesis 
of inner and outer may be expected to appear in diverse and more 
difficult forms. I desire in the present chapter to apply it to the 
Roman life of antiquity, as presented in the three plays of Corio- 
lanus, Julius CcEsar, Antony and Cleopatra. 

A wide gulf of difference, both in thought and feeling, separates 
what we call modern times from antiquity ; the difference is often 
overlooked, and, as it appears to me, modern readers are led into 
serious misinterpretations of ancient character and action. The 
difficulty of the discussion is increased by the fact that the same 
terms are applied to ancient and to modern life, but the words are 
used in different senses. Thus in reference to any age we may 
speak of subordinating the individual to the state. But a modern 
writer means by ' the state ' the sum of the individuals composing 
it ; his subordination of the individual puts in another form the 
principle of seeking the greatest good of the greatest number. An 
ancient thinker, on the contrary, might understand ' the state ' as 
an entity in itself: the abstract thing, government. We should 
to-day assume as a matter of course, that any government must 
exist in the interest of the people governed ; the ancient philoso- 

l\\ 



112 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

pher might reverse the proposition, and tacitly assume that those 
who were being governed existed for the sake of the government. 
Such an attitude of mind is well illustrated in Plato's ideal repub- 
lic, which abolishes, not only private property, but even marriage, 
because children born without family ties will be more completely 
at the service of the state. Again, ancient and modern statesmen 
have ahke exalted ' liberty ' : but the word is used by the two in 
opposite senses. With us, liberty means the freedom of the indi- 
vidual, so far as may be, from state control. In ancient politics 
liberty meant the freedom of the state from being controlled by 
individuals. An example of the latter conception is the Athenian 
institution of ostracism, which was not banishment inflicted as a 
punishment by judicial process, but an authoritative request to 
retire from the country; the citizen voting to ostracise Aristides 
*' because he did not like to hear him called the Just," illustrates 
the spirit of the institution, that the state has a right to be free from 
a personal influence, even when that influence is wholly good. 

This difference of political conceptions is part of a wider differ- 
ence between ancient and modern thought, running on the same 
dividing line of the community and the individual. A man of 
to-day may feel that he has got down to the bed rock of practical 
philosophy in proclaiming the rights of man ; to the ancient mind 
the rights of society were still more fundamental. Hence the ab- 
surdity of such visionary theorising as Rousseau's social contract : 
in the sober light of history it appears that the society which it is 
desired to explain was anterior to the conception of individual 
rights assumed for its origin. Property, again, reflects the differ- 
ence between ancient and modern thinking : what seems so sim- 
ple to us, the idea of a man's owning a piece of land, was a late 
conception in ancient life, slowly elaborated from the original idea 
that land belonged to the community. In the field of literature 
also confusion has arisen from intruding the modern idea of indi- 
viduality into the social activities of antiquity. The modern mind 
associates a particular ' author ' with a particular piece of litera- 
ture, and protects by copyright laws the author's ' property ' in what 



ROMAN LIFE DRAMATISED II3 

he produces ; it is slow to grasp the totally different conditions of 
oral poetry, when production was a function of the minstrel order 
as a whole, without connection between individual poet and indi- 
vidual poem ; when * Homer ' would be a name, not for a man, 
but for a mass of floating ballads, the product of many poets 
through many generations, subsequently worked up by a single 
mind into our I/i'a^ or Odyssey. Even in the sphere of religion 
we may trace the difference between the earlier and the later atti- 
tude of mind. In the religious development comprised within 
the limits of the Bible we see first a national religion, God in 
covenant with Israel ; at a much later stage comes into promi- 
nence another conception, and Jeremiah speaks of the new cove- 
nant written on the hearts of individual worshippers. 

In these diverse conceptions of life, centering respectively 
around the state and the individual, we have the antithesis of the 
life without and the life within reappearing in a different form. 
In the simplicity of ancient Hfe man differed little from man, or 
men fell into well marked classes ; the earliest institutions rested 
on the idea of these classifications, or of society as a whole. But 
with advancing civihsation came increasing variation between the 
characters of different persons ; consciousness of difference from 
others must give emphasis to the sense of individuality as a 
whole ; quickened sense of individuality in a man's self carries 
with it sympathy with and insight into individuality in others. 
Thus with the progress of time individuality comes to assert itself 
as a rival ideal to the ideal of the state. This makes an interest- 
ing basis on which to analyse the three Roman plays of Shake- 
speare : they stand for us as representing three different points 
along the hne of political evolution, in which the pure ideal of the 
state and the life without is gradually yielding before the growing 
prominence of the inner life and the claims of individuals. 

The play of Coriolanus is pitched at an early point in the line 
of historical development : the only ideal here is the ideal of the 
state, the common life to which all actions must have their refer- 
I 



114 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

ence, while the claims of individuality have just begun to appear 
as a disturbing force. Thus in relation to this story the antithesis 
of the outer and inner life becomes the antithesis between pure 
political principle and that concession to the individual which we 
call compromise. 

On the surface of the story we have contests of parties, patri- 
cians and plebeians. But these are not, like the Whig and Tory, 
Democrat and Republican, of modem times, organisations con- 
tending for different plans of reaching a common good. For both 
patricians and plebeians there is but one ideal, that of service to 
the state ; and to this ideal the patrician party is wholly devoted, 
as typified by such leaders as Titus Lartius — ready to lean on 
one crutch and fight the enemy with the other ^ — or the incom- 
parable Coriolanus. It is true that at one excited point of the 
conflict a representative of the plebeians — as if with a sudden 
insight into the thought of future ages — cries out^ : 

What is the city but the people? 

But in the action of the play this comes only as a wild extrava- 
gance, and no representation of the motives actually at work. 
The plebeians as they appear in this drama have no ideal of their 
own to set up, but are defaulters to the conception of duty recog- 
nised by all. They " cannot rule, nor ever will be ruled " ; their 
" affections are a sick man's appetite, who desires most that which 
would increase his evil." What their scornful opponents say of 
them harmonises with what their actions show in the story, as we 
see the mob stealing away at the first word of war, and even those 
who are equal to fighting the Volscians diverted from valour by 
the first chance of petty spoil.^ This single political virtue to 
which part of the people are untrue is the very point of the famous 
Fable of the Belly and Members, with which Menenius strikes the 
key-note of the whole play."* The belly and the members are not 
coordinate limbs of the body; the drift of the parable is that 

1 1, i. 246. 8 Compare III. i. 40 ; I. i. 181 ; I. i. 255, stage direction ; I. v, 

2 III. i. 199. 4 I. i^ from 92. 



ROMAN LIFE DRAMATISED 



115 



the belly is the state, and the members, so far as they are not serv- 
ing the belly, are disturbers of the general health of the physical 
or political body. 

Men, Your most grave belly was deliberate, 

Not rash like his accusers, and thus answer'd : 

' True is it, my incorporate friends,' quoth he, 

* That I receive the general food at first, 

Which you do live upon ; and fit it is. 

Because I am the store-house and the shop 

Of the whole body : but, if you do remember, 

I send it through the rivers of your blood. 

Even to the court, the heart, to the seat o' the brain; 

And, through the cranks and offices of man, 

The strongest nerves and most inferior veins 

From me receive that natural competency 

Whereby they live : and though that all at once, 

You, my good friends,' — this says the belly, mark me, — 

First at. Ay, sir ; well, well. 

Men. ^ Though all at once cannot 

See what I deliver out to each. 
Yet I can make my audit up, that all 
From me do back receive the flour of all, 
And leave me but the bran.' What say you to't? 

First at. It was an answer : how apply you this? 

Men. The senators of Rome are this good belly. 

And you the mutinous members : for examine 

Their counsels and their cares, digest things rightly 

Touching the weal o' the common, you shall find 

No public benefit which you receive 

But it proceeds or comes from them to you 

And no way from yourselves. What do you think, 

You, the great toe of this assembly ? 

First at. I the great toe ! why the great toe ? 

Men. For that, being one o' the lowest, basest, poorest, 

Of this most wise rebellion, thou go'st foremost. 



What then is the position of the plebeian party in the conflict ? 
They have no political ideal to set up ; what they put forward is 



Il6 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

individuality reduced to its lowest terms — the bare right to exist. 
It is precisely the story of the petty defaulter and the grand minis- 
ter of France: the defaulter makes his plea, II faut vivre ; to 
which the chancellor answers loftily, Monsieur, je n^en vols pas la 
necessite. So the plebeian mob : 

They said they were an-hungry ; sigh'd forth proverbs, 
That hunger broke stone walls, that dogs must eat, 
That meat was made for mouths, that the gods sent not 
Corn for the rich men only. ^ 

The claims of the individual life are not exalted into an ideal; 
they have come in as a disturbing force to the common ideal of 
the state and its service. The exact situation is that, at the open- 
ing of the action, the patricians have compromised with this dis- 
turbing claim of the individual ; they have ordered distributions of 
corn as gratuities and not for service done ; ^ worse than this, they 
have created tribunes of the people,^ a perpetual mouthpiece for 
popular claims, and thus a disturbing force to the old single ideal of 
the state has been admitted within the constitution itself. Nothing 
but conflict can ensue ; and at the height of the conflict the speech 
of Coriolanus — continued amid interruptions from both sides * — 
brings out clearly how this is a conflict between pure political princi- 
ple, as Rome had understood it, and compromising recognition of 
popular demands. 

O good, but most unwise patricians ! why. 

You grave but reckless senators, have you thus 

Given Hydra here to choose an officer. 

That with his peremptory ^ shall,^ being but 

The horn and noise o' the monster's, wants not spirit 

To say he'll turn your current in a ditch, 

And make your channel his ? . . . My soul aches 

To know, when two authorities are up. 

Neither supreme, how soon confusion 

May enter 'twixt the gap of both and take 

1 1, i. 209. 8 I. i. 219. 

2 III. i, from 120. * III. i. 91-171. 



ROMAN LIFE DRAMATISED II7 

The one by the other. . . . They know the corn 

Was not our recompense, resting well assured 

They ne'er did service for't : being pressed to the war, 

Even when the navel of the state was touch'd, 

They would not thread the gates. This kind of service 

Did not deserve corn gratis : being i' the war, 

Their mutinies and revolts, wherein they show'd 

Most valour, spoke not for them : the accusation 

Which they have often made against the senate, 

All cause unborn, could never be the motive 

Of our so frank donation. Well, what then ? 

How shall this bisson multitude digest 

The senate's courtesy.? Let deeds express 

What's like to be their words : ' We did request it ; 

We are the greater poll, and in true fear 

They gave us our demands.' Therefore, beseech you, — 

You, that will be less fearful than discreet ; 

That love the fundamental part of state 

More than you doubt the change on't ; that prefer 

A noble Hfe before a long, and wish 

To jump a body with a dangerous physic 

That's sure of death without it, — at once pluck out 

The multitudinous tongue ; let them not lick 

The sweet which is their poison. ... In a rebellion, 

When what's not meet, but what must be, was law, 

Then were they chosen : in a better hour. 

Let what is meet be said it must be meet. 

And throw their power i' the dust. 

Around this central idea of principle in conflict with compromise 
the characters of the drama naturally arrange themselves. Corio- 
lanus himself embodies absolute devotion to principle, the one ideal 
of service to the state. Panegyric relates prodigies of valour, mar- 
vels of self-exposure against odds, which have made Coriolanus the 
grand hero of the age.^ Yet this is not the fire-eating battle passion 
of a Hotspur ; Coriolanus hates praise, and would rather have his 
wounds to heal again than hear how he got them.^ 

1 E.g. II. ii, from 86. 2 u. ii. 73^ 7^, 



Il8 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

I have done 
As you have done ; that's what I can : induced 
As you have been ; thaf s for my country : 
He that has but effected his good will 
Hath overta'en mine act.^ 

Still less can this warrior tolerate reward. 

He covets less 
Than misery itself would give ; rewards 
His deeds with doing them, and is content 
To spend the time to end it.^ 

The deeds are not actuated by personal ambition : Coriolanus has 
to be pushed forward by the patricians to office, and " would rather 
be their servant in his own way than sway with them in theirs."^ 
From first to last no personal motive can be detected in Coriolanus : 
he is actuated solely by the passion for service. Hence the injus- 
tice of the common interpretation, which in this drama sees pride 
and its fall. The mistake is an easy one, for ' proud ' is the epithet 
for Coriolanus that is heard throughout the story, and even in his 
own mother's mouth. 

Thy valiantness was mine, thou suck'dst it from me, 
But owe thy pride thyself.* 

Moreover, what we see of outward demeanour in Coriolanus is 
just the flash of scorn and mocking taunt with which pride ex- 
presses itself. Yet, if we force ourselves to do justice to this hero, 
we must acquit him of the charge of pride. Scorn is the expression 
of righteous indignation, as well as of personal haughtiness; the 
honest workman, of the type of Adam Bede, has nothing but scorn 
for the feckless makeshift throwing down his work the moment the 
bell rings ; and this on a larger scale makes the magnificent war- 
rior in his attitude to the plebeians who claim feed and shirk duty. 
The mother of Coriolanus, we shall see, has an ideal different from 

1 I. ix. 15. « II. i. 219. 

2 II. ii. 130. * III. ii. 199. 



ROMAN LIFE DRAMATISED II9 

that of her son ; moreover, she is infected with the spirit of com- 
promise around her, and fails to appreciate the pure stand for 
principle. Apart from this contempt for half service, where is the 
pride of Coriolanus to be found ? It is not personal pride : for this 
hero of the batdefield cordially and without a moment's hesitation 
places himself under command of an inferior; his enemies the 
tribunes note this, and wonder how "his insolence can brook to 
be commanded under Cominius." ^ It is not the aristocratic pride 
that contemns the people as such : this is suggested by an incident 
in which the people can be seen apart from the plebeian defaulters.^ 

Cor. The gods begin to mock me. I, that now 

Refused most princely gifts, am bound to beg 

Of my lord general. 
Com. Take't ; 'tis yours. What is't ? 

Cor. I sometime lay here in Corioli 

At a poor man's house ; he used me kindly : 

He cried to me ; I saw him prisoner : 

But then Aufidius was within my view, 

And wrath o'erwhelmM my pity : I request you 

To give my poor host freedom. 

The " noble carelessness " whether the populace love or hate 
him, the bitter contempt he pours out, are in Coriolanus but the 
expression of the whole-souled devotion to principle, as against 
the universal tendency to temporise which he sees around him.^ 
His ideal may be the opposite of our modern humanity ; but jus- 



1 I. i. 265. 2 I. ix. 79. 

8 The nearest approach to aristocratic contempt is the gibe (in II. iii. 67) : " Bid 
them wash their faces and keep their teeth clean." But this is directed, not against 
the people, but against the insincere flattery of the people which is being urged on 
Coriolanus. The conversation of the two officers (in II. ii) is very much to the 
point. The first officer puts the common view that " to affect the malice and dis- 
pleasure of the people is as bad as ... to flatter them for their love " ; the second 
officer points out that Coriolanus does neither, but fixes his regards always upon 
"the country," that is, the state. And at the end the first officer seems to be 
convinced. 



120 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

tice forces us to recognise the purest type of a soul in which all 
personal aims have been merged in the thought of service. 

His nature is too noble for the world : 

He would not flatter Neptune for his trident, 

Or Jove for his power to thunder. His heart's his mouth : 

What his breast forges, that his tongue must vent.^ 

It is Coriolanus alone who typifies purity of principle : all the 
other personages in some form or other exhibit the spirit of 
compromise. The tribunes, as we have seen, simply give expres- 
sion to the compromising claims of the individual ; their office has 
been created in a moment of panic, by a patrician party who shrink 
from carrying their political ideal to its logical conclusion. Aufid- 
ius up to a certain point keeps step with Coriolanus : each in his 
respective state is the absolute devotee of public service, and each 
recognises the perfection of the other.^ But at last the honour 
of Aufidius begins to be obscured. 

Mine emulation 
Hath not that honour in't it had ; for where 
I thought to crush him in an equal force, 
True sword to sword. Til potch at him some way, 
Or wrath or craft may get him.^ 

Personal rivalry has here come in as a disturbing force to principle ; 
and, although for a while Aufidius's honour flames up to its full 
brightness when Coriolanus surrenders to him, and he delights to 
exalt his former rival to the command over himself,^ yet Aufidius 
proves unequal to the strain, and yields to the base envy which 
plots against a personality acknowledged to be the great bulwark* 
of the Volscian state.* Even Volumnia must be referred to the 
same side of the antithesis. In the earlier part of the play not 
only does the mother of Coriolanus seem the equal of her heroic 
son, but she is put forward as the fount from which has flowed his 
public virtue. But as the crisis manifests itself, and the career 

1 in. i. 255. 

2 E^g^ I. i. 232-40; 1. iii. 34; I. viii ; IV. v, from 108. 
« I. X. 12. ^ IV. V. 142, 207. 5 IV. vii. 



ROMAN LIFE DRAMATISED 121 

and even safety of Coriolanus are at stake, Volumnia begins to 
draw apart from the pure principle of her son, and speaks the 
language of compromise, bidding him dissemble, and introduce 
into Rome itself the arts with which he fights Rome's foes.^ 

If it be honour in 3'our wars to seem 

The same you are not, which, for your best ends, 

You adopt your policy, how is it less or worse, 

That it shall hold companionship in peace 

With honour, as in war, since that to both 

It stands in like request ? ... It lies you on to speak 

To the people ; not by your own instruction. 

Nor by the matter which your heart prompts you, 

But with such words that are but rooted in 

Your tongue, though but bastards and syllables 

Of no allowance to your bosom's truth. 

Now, this no more dishonours you at all 

Than to take in a town with gentle words, 

Which else would put you to your fortune and 

The hazard of much blood. 

I would dissemble with my nature, where 

My fortunes and my friends at stake required 

I should do so in honour. 

The compromising spirit so clearly described underHes Volumnia's 
action in the final crisis. The sympathies of the modern reader 
are with her, for she represents the modern ideal of patriotism. 
But, once the ancient point of view has been caught, it must be 
admitted that from this standpoint even patriotism is a compromise 
with principle ; it is not pure devotion to the ideal of government, 
but devotion to that particular government with which the individ- 
ual has been connected by the accident of birth. Coriolanus, as 
a servant of the Volscian state, exhibits the same absolute fidelity 
to the public service at all personal cost which once he had cher- 
ished for Rome. Volumnia on her knees before the conqueror 
appears as a force disturbing faithful service by motives of senti- 
ment and passion. 

1 III. ii, from 41. 



122 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

The action of the play, no less than the character-drawing, is 
founded on this antithesis of principle and compromise, the state 
and the individual. The entanglement of the plot Ues essentially 
in the opening situation, and not until the fifth act in the conduct 
of the hero. In the earlier part all the action serves to display the 
grandeur of the principal figure ; it is not simply service, but mag- 
nificent achievement, at the price of infinite self-devotion, with 
Coriolanus rejecting all reward, and resisting the honours all are 
thrusting upon him, up to the point where further resistance would 
be exalting his personal feeling against the public voice.^ The 
patricians insist upon office for their hero : again he resists and 
prefers to be servant only of the state, once more pushing his 
resistance to the furthest point to which the individual may 
oppose the public will.^ But just here appears the entanglement 
which the compromising spirit of the time has admitted into the 
constitution of Rome; popular claims have won recognition in 
election to office, and the candidate's gown is the outward symbol 
of two incompatible things in conflict, the patrician ideal of the 
state and the temporising courtship of individual plebeians. It 
may be urged that Coriolanus plays his part as candidate badly; 
the tribunes point out " with what contempt he wore the humble 
weed." But what else could be expected from the situation 
created against his will for Coriolanus ? Principle itself has been 
arrayed in the garment of compromise. 

Why in this woolvish toge should I stand here, 
To beg of Hob and Dick, that do appear, 
Their needless vouches? Custom calls me to't: 
What custom wills, in all things should we do't, 
The dust on antique time would lie unswept, 
And mountainous error be too highly heap'd 
For truth to o'er-peer. Rather than fool it so, 
Let the high office and the honour go 
To one that would do thus.^ 

1 L ix. 53-60. 2 n. i. 218 ; II. ii, from 139; III. ii. 

3 II. iii. 122. 



ROMAN LIFE DRAMATISED 1 23 

The latent conflict works itself out to a sharp crisis : Coriolanus, 
as we have seen, makes one more stand for pure principle, and 
would sweep away at a stroke all that has allowed popular claims 
to interfere with the ideal of the state and the public service. It 
has become a question of brute force : the hero of the patricians is 
worsted and receives sentence of banishment. At this height of the 
struggle^ comes the magnificent stroke with which Shakespeare, in 
a single flash, presents the whole issue, as Coriolanus hurls against 
the hubbub of Rome's confusion the answering taunt — 

I BANISH YOU ! 

Not Rome, but Rome in the hands of the tribunes, is thus ad- 
dressed : the state has committed political suicide, self-surrendered 
to the forces that disintegrate it, before Coriolanus abandons it. 
The principle at stake is not patriotism, which roots the individual 
to the soil where he has grown ; dismissed from the state it has so 
gloriously served, the life of service is free to transfer itself to 
another. Coriolanus becomes a Volscian, and, with no popular 
turbulence to interfere, leads the Volscian armies to victory. 
This may be called revenge, but it is no less service ; and the 
service is as flawless as in the old days. 

Cor. Wife, mother, child, I know not. My affairs 
Are servanted to others : though I owe 
My revenge properly, my remission lies 
In Volscian breasts. ^ 

A second crisis of the action is made where mother, wife, and 
child kneel in behalf of Rome before the conqueror.^ The whole 
force of kinship and patriotism is concentrated in one motive. 
But, from the ancient standpoint, kinship and patriotism are an 
exalted form of individuality : the two sides of the antithesis, the 
state and the individual, are seen in full conflict. The situation 
has been created which is so dear to the ancient drama — two 

1 III. iii, from 120. 2 v. ii. 88, and whole scene. » V. iii. 



124 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

opposing moral forces meet in the same personage : the tragic 
sequel is that the personage is crushed. Volumnia does not see 
this, and speaks of reconciliation.^ 

Vol. If it were so that our request did tend 
To save the Romans, thereby to destroy 
The Volsces whom you serve, you might condemn us, 
As poisonous of your honour : no ; our suit 
Is, that you reconcile them. 

But her son sees more clearly, and reaUses the bitter irony of the 
situation.^ 

Cor. {After holding her by the hand, silent) O mother, mother! 
What have you done? Behold, the heavens do ope, 
The gods look down, and this unnatural scene 
They laugh at. O my mother, mother ! O ! 
You have won a happy victory to Rome ; 
But, fo'' your son, — believe it, O, believe it, 
Most dangerously you have with him prevailed, 
If not most mortal to him. But let it come. 

Coriolanus understands that a point has been reached where he 
must make a final choice between principle and compromise : the 
embodiment of principle chooses compromise, but he knows he is 
choosing ruin for himself. 

There is yet another turning-point before the action of the play 
is complete. Coriolanus leading the Volscian army away from 
Rome gives scope for nemesis : the devotee of principle has sur- 
rendered to compromise, and the ruin that follows comes as retri- 
bution. But all the while there is by the side of the hero another 
personality, in which there has been a far worse surrender of 
honour ; Aufidius has yielded to personal rivalry and base envy, 
and, by slander and secret plotting, at last strikes down Coriolanus 
on his return.^ Instantly, to the spectator of the story, nemesis 
has given place to pathos ; the hero falls a wronged man, and his 

1 V. iii. 132. 2 V. iii. 182. « V. vi. 



ROMAN LIFE DRAMATISED 1 25 

error is forgotten in the thought of his heroism. Even Aufidius 
has a pang of compunction : 

My rage is gone, 
And I am struck with sorrow.^ 

And it is a lord of the Volscians who speaks the fitting epitaph 
for the supreme representative of old Roman honour : 

Mourn you for him : let him be regarded 
As the most noble corse that ever herald 
Did follow to his urn.^ 



When we come to the play of Julius CcBsar, we are met with 
the difficulty that Shakespeare has here drawn the characters with 
such subtlety, and so delicately balanced the motives, that various 
impressions are left ; different readers find themselves at the close 
partisans of Caesar or Brutus. I have elsewhere analysed the 
drama at length;^ in the present chapter I must be content with 
stating results. For myself, I am unable to see any personal or 
corrupt motive either in Caesar or in his great opponent. Brutus, 
at immense cost to himself, slays the friend he loves in order, as 
he thinks, to save the country he loves better. And Caesar is 
seeking absolute power — which the constitution of Rome recog- 
nised to some extent in its dictatorship — simply with the view of 
doing for Rome itself the service of organisation he had done 
outside for the Roman empire. The immediate point is to survey 
the drama from the standpoint of the outer and the inner life. 

The conflict between the pure ideal of the state and the grow- 
ing force of individuality, which the drama of Coriolanus exhibited 
in its first beginnings, is presented by Julius Ccesar in a late 
stage of development. Generations of time have separated the 
age of the one story from that of the other, and all the while the 
silent progress of human nature has carried with it the expansion 

IV. vi. 148. 2V. vi. 143. 

« In my Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist: Chapters VIII and IX. 



126 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

of the individual life; the two sides of the antithesis are now to meet 
on equal terms. Rome is still a republic, and the republican ideal 
is a mighty force. But alike those who cherish this ideal, and those 
who oppose it, have been secretly moulded by the growth of indi- 
vidual character. 

The multitude, swayed hither and thither by every orator, are 
still the expression of individuaUty in its lowest form ; but with a 
difference — they are all-powerful. The question that seemed a 
paradox in Coiiolanus — 

What is the city, but the people ? — 

has now won an affirmative answer : all look to the people as the 
source of rule. The magnificent C?esar can obtain his dominion 
only if he wins the popular voice ; to the mob the cause of the 
conspirators must appeal for its justification. 

The leading personages of the story are interesting for the bal- 
ance in each of the outer and inner Hfe. Especially pecuhar is 
the position of Caesar himself. Advancing individuality implies 
increasing differentiation; among the infinite possible forms that 
personahty may take, we may expect to find at last an individu- 
ality taking the form of service, of entire devotion to the ideal of 
the state. So it is with the Caesar of this play. He is Coriolanus 
on a larger moral scale : there is here not the simple valour which 
found complete expression in a Volscian war, but an all-round per- 
sonality, with infinite resources of intellect and loftiness of moral 
power, the whole concentrated in the government of men and the 
founding of empire for Rome. But this Caesar has no inner Hfe : 
that is to say, when he is seen apart from service to the state he 
exhibits, not wrongness, but weakness. His foes read him as 
"superstitious"; he dreads — to his own surprise — the subtle- 
souled Cassius ; on the subtle-souled Antony he leans for support. 
And, when the great ruler of men seeks to adapt himself to the 
individuaHties of a mob, he finds himself bewildered, vacillating, 
and without resource. Brutus, who inherits from his family high- 
souled devotion to the state, has no less a strong development of his 



ROMAN LIFE DRAMATISED 12/ 

individuality ; it is seen in his devotion to philosophy and music, 
in his sympathy with the delicate spirit of Portia, and his deep 
friendship for Caesar. But the inner life is held down in Brutus 
by sheer force of stoicism, the religion that professes to crush out 
personahty ; by such self-suppression he is calm before the raging 
mob, and insists to Cassius upon minutiae of business all the while 
that he is concealing the blow of bereavement that has taken from 
him his Portia. Cassius again is a strange mixture. At first it 
would seem as if this machine pohtician and conspirator was 
wholly summed up in the life without, in devotion to the repubU- 
can cause. But when we inquire what exactly is the cause Cassius 
is serving, we find this to be, not pubHc life as it appears out- 
wardly, but a fanatic's idealised equality, an abstract impossi- 
bihty, such equality as can exist only in an individual's dreaming. 
He sounds the names ^ 'Caesar,' 'Brutus,' and insists that the per- 
sonalities must be as mechanically equal as the sounds; all the 
difference between man and man made by genius and achieve- 
ment he ignores ; paradoxically, his individuality shows itself in a 
theory that objects to individuality even when it has taken the 
form of service to the state. In Antony, finally, as in the rest, 
individual character has been strongly developed, and he can thus 
play with the individualities that make up a mob. But he is also, 
in the present drama, a zealous servant of the state ; for at this 
juncture, his personal interests and the deliverance of Rome from 
the conspirators move in one and the same path. 

The action of the play, no less than the characters, turns upon 
the antithesis between the state and the individual. The exact 
issue is seen where Brutus in his deep ponderings pronounces 
Caesar an innocent man, yet resolves to slay him for the possi- 
bilities that might be.^ Justice to the innocent is the supreme 
claim of the individual : it is here sacrificed to policy, a claim of 
the state. The irony of events brings a sequel, in which this 

1 1, ii. 142. 

2 II. i : the use of the word affections in contrast with reason (line 20) just points 

to the antithesis of private and public motives. 



128 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

policy of the conspiracy is brought to its ruin by the force of out- 
raged individuality, and Brutus, ere he dies, recognises that Julius 
Caesar is mighty after his death.^ In the moment of triumph the 
conspirators made their claim to be — 

The men that gave their country liberty. 

Their conception of 'liberty' was to free Rome from a Julius 
Csesar, seeking power for Rome's sake : the issue of their action 
was to deliver Rome to an Antony and an Octavius, seeking power 
only for themselves. 

Not a long course of years, but a sudden revolution, separates 
the third play of the trilogy from the second. Mob rule as an 
expression of unbridled individuality has been allowed the free 
play which has led naturally to its own ruin. 

This common body, 
Like to a vagabond flag upon the stream. 
Goes to and back, lackeying the varying tide, 
To rot itself with motion. ^ 

The irresistible advance of popular claims has eventuated in 
empire ; the end of the conflict between the state and the indi- 
vidual is that an individual has now become the state. It might 
seem, indeed, that in the present case there were two individuali- 
ties, or at first three : the Roman world is in the hands of a trium- 
virate. But this is only appearance. Lepidus is never anything 
but a figurehead.^ Octavius Csesar is a power, destined in the 
final issue to be a dominant power ; but at the opening of the 
play Csesar is no power as against Antony. Caesar loses hearts 
where he gets money ;* on the testimony of the common enemy 
Antony's soldiership " is twice the other twain " ;* history is in the 
drama of Shakespeare so moulded as to imply that the empire of 
the world is Antony's, if he chooses to grasp it. 

1 V. iii. 94. ^ Antony and Cleopatra, I, iv. 44. 

3 II. i. 16; II. vii; III. V. Compare Julius Ccesar: IV. i, from 12. 

4 Antony and Cleopatra, II. i. 13. « II. i. 34. 



ROMAN LIFE DRAMATISED 120 

But why this "if"? What should hold back Antony from the 
universal dominion which it is his to command ? We have seen 
in the play q{ Julius Ccesar, how the two sides of Antony's nature 
are there in harmony. He has a complex individuality in touch 
with every element of human nature ; but he brings this individu- 
ality of his into public life, and, in the storms of revolution, this is 
the means by which he conquers all hearts and wins supremacy. 
But in the present play a new force has emerged, which touches 
the individual nature of Antony, and sways it in a direction away 
from the public career inviting him. This force is Cleopatra. 

Even Shakespeare's power of painting human nature has ex- 
hibited no greater feat than his Cleopatra. We cannot sketch her 
character, for character is just what she has not. Cleopatra is not 
a woman, but a bundle of all womanly qualities tied together by 
the string of pure caprice. She does not appear as a human soul, 
but as a " great fairy," an enchantress ; it is her " magic " that 
has ruined Antony.^ She is addressed as one — 

Whom every thing becomes, to chide, to laugh, 
To weep ; whose every passion fully strives 
To make itself, in thee, fair and admired! 2 

The humorist of the play sees in her something elemental. 

Antony. She is cunning past man's thought. 

Enobarbtis. Alack, sir, no ; her passions are made of nothing 
but the finest part of pure love : we cannot call her winds and 
waters sighs and tears ; they are greater storms and tempests 
than almanacs can report : this cannot be cunning in her ; if 
it be, she makes a shower of rain as well as Jove.^ 

Whatever charms of person or arts of wooing other women may 
have, Cleopatra has them all : but as readily can she use their 
opposites. 

I saw her once 

Hop forty paces through the public street ; 

And having lost her breath, she spoke, and panted, 

1 IV. viii. 12 ; I. ii. 132 ; III. X. 19. 2 I. i, 49. s I, ii^ „o^ 

K 



I30 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

That she did make defect perfection, 
And, breathless, power breathe forth. . . . 
Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale 
Her infinite variety : other women cloy 
The appetites they feed, but she makes hungry 
Where most she satisfies : for vilest things 
Become themselves in her.^ 

She can enter into every passing mood of Antony, breathing out 
naval heroism when he inclines to fight by sea ; ^ or, at will, Cleo- 
patra can entice by mocking. 

If you find him sad, 
Say I am dancing ; if in mirth, report 
That I am sudden sick.^ 

She can sail close to the wind, and irritate the compunction An- 
tony feels for the noble wife he has forsaken. 

Why should I think you can be mine and true, 
Though you in swearing shake the throned gods, 
Who have been false to Fulvia?* 

Arbitrary individuaHty is incarnate in Cleopatra : and this is just 
what has conquered Antony. He himself amongst men had been 
the myriad-sided. His oration, in which he could catch every 
fluctuating passion of the mob, and draw them all into whatever 
harmony he chose, was like the virtuoso exhibiting the powers of 
his instrument ; but when Cleopatra comes in, it is as if the instru- 
ment were to play the virtuoso. The great soul, that can sway 
men's passions in any direction he pleases, is himself adrift in a 
sea of feminine passions, that knows no shore of a responsible 
soul. 

Thus the antithesis of the world without and the world within, 
instead of disappearing, has in the third play of the trilogy come 
back in a new form. The rivalry of the state and the individual 
is now to be seen within the personality of Antony himself : it is 

1 II. ii. 233. a ni. vii, from 29. 8 i, iii. 3, 4 i, iii. 27. 



ROMAN LIFE DRAMATISED I3I 

the conflict, for Antony, between his public and his private life. 
This one individual, if only he chooses to give himself to public 
affairs, has world empire in his grasp. But it is also possible for 
Antony to find his world elsewhere. 

Ant. Let Rome in Tiber melt, and the wide arch 

Of the ranged empire fall ! Here is my space. 

Kingdoms are clay : our dungy earth alike 

Feeds beast as man : the nobleness of life 

Is to do thus ; when such a mutual pair \E7jtbracing. 

And such a twain can doH, in which I bind, 

On pain of punishment, the world to weet 

We stand up peerless.^ 

For this competing pubHc and private life of Antony there is an 
external measure in the movement of the play : Antony conjoin- 
ing himself with Caesar is the life rising to public duty ; Antony 
inclining to Cleopatra is the life falling to private passion. 

The action of the drama, viewed from this standpoint, falls into 
five well-marked stages.^ 

I. A portion of the poem displays the opening situation : An- 
tony, under the spell of Cleopatra, is neglecting public for private 
life. His colleagues in Rome are merely waiting ; and this is the 
situation as they see it.^ 

From Alexandria 
This is the news : he fishes, drinks and wastes 
The lamps of night in revel : is not more manlike 
Than Cleopatra, nor the queen of Ptolemy 
More womanly than he : hardly gave audience, or 
Vouchsafed to think he had partners. ... Let us grant, it is not 
Amiss to tumble on the bed of Ptolemy, 
To give a kingdom for a mirth, to sit 
And keep the turn of tippling with a slave. 



1-33- 



2 Of course these stages cannot be separated into acts and scenes. Thus, An- 
tony in Egypt passes in I. ii from the first to the second stage; while in I. iv they 
are in Rome still discussing the opening situation- Compare scheme on page 359. 

3 L iv. 



132 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

To reel the streets at noon and stand the buffet 

With knaves that smell of sweat : ... yet must Antony 

No way excuse his soils, when we do bear 

So great weight in his lightness. If he fiU'd 

His vacancy with his voluptuousness, 

Full surfeits, and the dryness of his bones, 

Call on him for't : but to confound such time 

That drums him from his sport, and speaks as loud 

As his own state and ours, — 'tis to be chid 

As we rate boys, who, being mature in knowledge, 

Pawn their experience to their present pleasure, 

And so rebel to judgement. 

Meanwhile, with no power to check, piracy is infesting the seas 
and making inroads upon land ; Parthian conquests are extending 
further and further westwards ; Pompey is coming into view as a 
new centre for the popular turbulence to gather about. Messen- 
gers bring tidings to Antony^; and at last he brings himself to 
realise the situation. 

O, then we bring forth weeds 

When our quick minds lie still ; and our ills told us 

Is as our earing . . . 

These strong Egyptian fetters I must break. 

Or lose myself in dotage . . . 

Ten thousand harms, more than the ills I know, 

My idleness doth hatch. ^ 

2. The shock of Fulvia's death ^ makes the point at which the 
rise of Antony begins. In the midst of his mirth "a Roman 
thought has struck him," and his mind opens to take in all that 
he is letting slip. Cleopatra in vain brings her whole armoury to 
bear; taunts and tenderness, despair and defiance, succeed one 
another in quick turns of paradox ; she can only end by blessing 
Antony's departure, and will unpeople Egypt, if necessary, to fol- 
low him up with messengers.* Pompey and his aUies are just 

1 1, ii, from 92. 8 I. ii. X2i. 

*I. ii. 113. *I.iii^v. 



ROMAN LIFE DRAMATISED 1 33 

gloating over the certainty that Egyptian seductions will main- 
tain the disunion through which they are strong, when tidings are 
brought that Antony is every hour expected in Rome.^ His ar- 
rival has changed the whole situation. Where Antony and Caesar 
are together, Antony seems to prevail by sheer weight of person- 
ality ; Caesar, lately the representative of moraHty rebuking disso- 
luteness, sinks into the second place, and all his sharp complaints 
have the effect of drawing out a moral nature loftier than his own.^ 
All seems now to depend upon binding these two powers to- 
gether j and the sagacity of Agrippa has found a link in Octavia, 
sister of Caesar, whom the widower Antony may now take to wife. 
This policy effected, the empire of the world seems to fall into 
order again : adequate powers are despatched against the Par- 
thian foe,^ Pompey and his allies exchange enmity for submission ; 
all seems to settle into peace and hospitable revels.* Only the 
humorist of the story looks ahead far enough to see other possi- 
bilities in this marriage of Octavia and Antony. 

He will to his Egyptian dish again : then shall the sighs of 
Octavia blow the fire up in Caesar; and, as I said before, 
that which is the strength of their amity shall prove the 
immediate author of their variance. ^ 

3. The fulfilment of this prophecy is the fall of Antony. Even 
when the contract was newly made, the arrival of the Soothsayer 
from Cleopatra brought in for a moment the atmosphere of Egypt, 
and Antony recognised the hollowness of the reconciliation : 

Though I make this marriage for my peace, 
r the East my pleasure lies.* 

When Antony and Caesar are separated by distance, the divergence 
increases apace. The unhappy Octavia, who must " pray for both 
parts," seeks from her husband the task of reconciler/ 

Ul.i. 8II.iii.40. 6 II. vi. 134. niLir. 

ail.u. «II.vi,vii; Ill.i. 6i1.iii.39. 



134 



THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 



The Jove of power make me, most weak, most weak, 
Your reconciler! Wars Hwixt you twain would be 
As if the world should cleave, and that slain men 
Should solder up the rift. 

Antony's assent to her mission is only his way of casting her off: 
when Octavia arrives in Rome all the world knows her shame.^ 
Meanwhile the whole east under Antony stands arrayed against 
Caesar and the west ; to the amazement of Antony, Caesar ad- 
vances stage after stage with a celerity passing all beHef, and the 
critical^ battle is close at hand. Just here is seen that which 
makes the fall of Antony a distinct stage of the action. In the 
opening situation Antony was simply neglecting public duty for 
private gratification : now, he allows the private life to infect the 
public with its own spirit. 
Antony, Canidius, we 

Will fight with him by sea. 

By sea, what else? 
Why will my lord do so ? 

For that he dares us to't. 
So hath my lord dared him to single fight. 
Ay, and to wage this battle at Pharsalia, 
Where Caesar fought with Pompey : but these offers. 
Which serve not for his vantage, he shakes off, 
And so should you. 

Your ships are not well mann'd. 
Your mariners are muleters, reapers, people 
Ingross'd by swift impress ; in Caesar's fleet 
Are those that often have 'gainst Pompey fought : 
Their ships are yare, yours, heavy : no disgrace 
Shall fall you for refiising him at sea, 
Being prepared for land. 

By sea, by sea. 
Most worthy sir, you therein throw away 
The absolute soldiership you have by land, 
Distract your army, which doth most consist 
Of war-mark'd footmen, leave unexecuted 



Cleopatra, 

Canidius. 

Antony. 

Enobarbns. 

Canidius. 



Enoharbus. 



Antony. 
Enobarbus 



1 III. vi, from 39. 



2 So Caesar seems to think in III. viii. 



ROMAN LIFE DRAMATISED 1 35 

Your own renowned knowledge, quite forego 

The way which promises assurance, and 

Give up yourself merely to chance and hazard 

From firm security. 
Antony. y\\ fight at sea. 

Cleopatra. I have sixty sails, Caesar none better. 
Antony. Our overplus of shipping will we burn ; 

And, with the rest full-mannM, from the head of Actium 

Beat the approaching Caesar.i 

Mere personal rivalry, and the thought that Cleopatra will look on, 
inspire Antony with the gambler's passion for risking awful odds^ 
while there is a wise alternative which the whole army implores 
him to take. The battle follows and Cleopatra is the first to flee ; 
Antony's heart is tied to her rudder strings, and he hurries after 
her. Only then does Antony wake up to the sense that he has 
fled before the unwarhke Caesar, and that the battle on which 
universal empire depends is lost : he knows " he is so lated in the 
world that he has lost his way forever." ^ Even the gambler's 
chances are no longer open to him : in vain he challenges Caesar 
to decide the contest in single combat ; Caesar would have " the 
old ruffian know he has many other ways to die." ^ All his fol- 
lowers can read clearly the lesson of their great leader's fall. 
Enobarbus. I see men's judgements are 

A parcel of their fortunes, and things outward 

Do draw the inward quality after them. 

To suffer all alike . . . Caesar, thou hast subdued 

His judgement too.'* 

Antony at last realises it to the full. 

Ant. When we in our viciousness grow hard — 

O misery on't ! — the wise gods seel our eyes ; 
In our own filth drop our clear judgements ; make us 
Adore our errors ; laugh at's, while we strut 
To our confusion.^ 

1 III. vii, from 28. s jy. i. 4. 5 m. xiii. m. 

*in.xi.3. 4 HI. xiii. 31. 



136 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

4. The doom of Antony has been sealed, though the struggle 
continues a while longer. The diminution of the captain's brain, 
as Enobarbus says, has restored his heart : ^ with supreme outburst 
of valour Antony fights another battle, and beats the enemy to 
their beds. A second fight is waged by sea and land : in the crisis 
of the day the Egyptian fleet deserts bodily to the enemy. Then 
the fall of Antony is complete : retribution has its full sway when 
the final stroke has come from Cleopatra. But a fourth stage of the 
action has become apparent, mingling with the preceding in the 
scenes of the play : ^ when once the doom of Antony has been 
assured, nemesis may gradually change to pathos. The hero is 
plunged in tragic ruin, so far as the outer life is concerned, and 
the ruin is just recompense ; but the inner Hfe has now scope to 
reveal itself, and the noble personality that is in Antony may rise 
to its full height amid the fragments of his shattered career. The 
infatuated commander disappears in the grand soldier; prodigies 
of valour and generalship are shown, with an army passionately 
devoted to their great chief. Eros, the personal attendant, slays 
himself rather than do his sworn duty in lifting his hand against 
Antony. Enobarbus, at the first sign of the end, had made peace 
for himself with the enemy : his late master's generosity to the 
deserter awakens in him a remorse that can only be quenched by 

death. 

I am alone the villain of the earth, 

And feel I am so most. O Antony, 

Thou mine of bounty, how would'st thou have paid 

My better service, when my turpitude 

Thou dost so crown with gold ! . . . I will go seek 

Some ditch wherein to die. 

Kingly flashes of just resentment, regardless of helplessness, show 
the conqueror's advance guard that it is better playing with a lion's 
whelp than with an old lion dying. Cleopatra, proved a traitor, is 
cast off ; but, when the (false) news of her death seems to vindi- 

1 III. xiii. 195-200. 

2 It affects the whole spirit of Act IV, but appears more especially from Scene 
xiv. 



ROMAN LIFE DRAMATISED 1 37 

cate her innocence, the old love for which the world has been lost 
returns in all its deepness, and this is the end for Antony. 

Unarm, Eros ; the long day's task is done, 

And we must sleep . . . From me awhile. 

I will overtake thee, Cleopatra, and 

Weep for my pardon. So it must be, for now 

All length is torture : since the torch is out. 

Lie down and stray no farther ... I come, my queen . , . 

Where souls do couch on flowers, we'll hand in hand. 

And with our sprightly port make the ghosts gaze : 

Dido and her ^neas shall want troops, 

And all the haunt be ours. 

It is a Roman climax that Antony should take his life with his own 
good sword. 

Not Caesar's valour hath overthrown Antony, 
But Antony's hath triumph'd on itself. 

But it is a lingering death, and the guards fill the air with clamour. 

Ant. Nay, good my fellows, do not please sharp fate 

To grace it with your sorrows : bid that welcome 
Which comes to punish us, and we punish it 
Seeming to bear it lightly. 

Before death comes, Cleopatra is known to be living, and the two 
meet : she, afraid to leave the monument lest she be taken prisoner 
by Caesar, he, to the last advising how his love may be secure in 
treating with the conqueror. 

Ant. The miserable change now at my end 

Lament nor sorrow at, but please your thoughts 
In feeding them with those my former fortunes 
Wherein I lived, the greatest prince o' the world, 
The noblest ; and do not now basely die, 
Not cowardly put off my helmet to 
My countryman, — a Roman by a Roman 
Valiantly vanquish'd. Now my spirit is going ; 
I can no more. 

Caesar and his followers confirm the epitaph.^ 

1 V. i. 30. 



138 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

McBcenas. His taints and honours 

Waged equal with him. 

Agrippa. A rarer spirit never 

Did steer humanity : but you, gods, will give us 
Some faults to make us men. Caesar is touched. 

5. But yet a further stage is to be seen in the action of this 
drama.^ The steady movement of relentless tragedy at last seems 
to awaken a soul in Cleopatra herself. All the while that Antony 
has been standing at bay with ruin, and dying all nobleness and 
love, the Egyptian has been packing cards with the conqueror, 
ready if needs be to betray her lover. But the actual death of 
Antony thrills a touch of womanhood into the fairy enchantress 
of male hearts. 

No more, but e^'en a woman, and commanded 
By such poor passion as the maid that milks 
, And does the meanest chares . . . AlPs but naught ; 

Patience is sottish, and impatience does 
Become a dog that's mad : then is it sin 
To rush into the secret house of death, 
Ere death dare come to us? . . . 
We'll bury him ; and then, what's brave, what's noble, 
Let's do it after the high Roman fashion. 
And make death proud to take us. 

It is but an imitative virtue which has begun to animate Cleopatra, 
and it is seen side by side with negotiations by which she tries her 
false arts on a Caesar as false as herself. But with growing hopeless- 
ness the new thought gains strength." 

My desolation does begin to make 

A better life. 'Tis paltry to be Caesar ; 

Not being Fortune, he's but Fortune's knave, 

A minister of her will : and it is great 



1 In the main, Act V ; commencing from the death of Antony in IV. xiv, 

2 V. ii. 



ROMAN LIFE DRAMATISED 1 39 

To do that thing that ends all other deeds ; 
Which shackles accidents and bolts up change ; 
Which sleeps, and never palates more the dug, 
The beggar's nurse and Caesar's. 

One more negotiation, and attempt to save something out of the 
wreck, and suddenly Cleopatra finds herself taken prisoner by 
treachery. Now the outer skin of feminine daintiness in which 
her wild spirit had ever been wrapped is touched. 

This mortal house I'll ruin, 
Do Caesar what he can. Know, sir, that I 
Will not wait pinion'd at your master's court, 
Nor once be chastised with the sober eye 
Of dull Octavia. Shall they hoist me up 
And show me to the shouting varletry 
Of censuring Rome? 

Two motives are combining their full force in Cleopatra : outraged 
deUcacy, and memory of Antony. 

I dream'd there was an Emperor Antony . . . 
His legs bestrid the ocean : his rear'd arm 
Crested the world : his voice was propertied 
As all the tuned spheres, and that to friends ; 
But when he meant to quail and shake the orb, 
He was as rattling thunder. For his bounty, j 
There was no winter in't ; an autumn 'twas 
That grew the more by reaping.^ 

Unity of purpose becomes ever stronger, and settles into a charac- 
ter for Cleopatra. 

Now from head to foot 

I am marble-constant ; now the fleeting moon 

No planet is of mine.^ 

The two elements of this character are reflected in the final scene : 
she has "pursued conclusions infinite to die," and discovered the 

1 V. ii. 76. 2 V. ii. 240. 



I40 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

delicate wonder of the aspic ; yet, in approaching death, she is 
rising nearer to Antony. 

I have 

Immortal longings in me . . . methinks I hear 

Antony call ; I see him rouse himself 

To praise my noble act ; I hear him mock 

The luck of Caesar . . . Husband, I come : 

Now to that name my courage prove my title! 

I am fire and air : my other elements 

I give to baser life.^ 

So, in royal robes and crown, her maidens beside her sharing her 
fate, Cleopatra finds the stroke of death like a lover's pinch, which 
hurts and is desired ; as sweet as balm, as soft as air. What the 
Roman conquerors break in to behold is the ideal of Roman con- 
stancy imitated in the cold marble of luxurious daintiness. 

She shall be buried by her Antony : 
No grave upon the earth shall clip in it 
A pair so famous. High events as these 
Strike those that make them ; and their story is 
No less in pity than his glory which 
Brought them to be lamented. 

1 V. ii, from 283. 



VII 

MORAL PROBLEMS DRAMATISED 

Poetry is the chemistry of human life, and the theatre is the 
moral laboratory. Just as the physicist supplements observation 
by experiment, setting up artificial combinations of forces in order 
that he may watch these working out to a natural issue, so it is 
the high function of story to initiate some special situation of 
characters and circumstances pregnant with moral suggestiveness ; 
the course of the story then follows the situation as in the nature 
of things it unfolds itself and reaches a point of satisfaction, the 
initial doubt satisfied, the initial perplexity resolved into clearness. 
The Shakespearean drama abounds in these moral problems drama- 
tised. Sometimes the situation which constitutes the problem 
seems to arise casually in the course of human affairs. In other 
cases there may be even within the story itself traces of con- 
trivance and design to set up a pregnant situation ; the problem 
then becomes, in the fullest sense, an experiment in morals. 

I have elsewhere^ discussed at length the play of King Lear as 
a problem drama : its plot may be thus stated. When Lear, at a 
check from Cordelia, suddenly overturns the carefully arranged 
division of the kingdom, we have imperious passion overthrowing 
conscience (represented in the interference of Kent), and setting 
up an unnatural distribution of power : power being taken from 
the good (Cordelia) and lodged in the hands of the bad (Goneril 
and Regan). The situation of unstable moral equilibrium thus 
set up makes the problem : for its solution we trace three interests 
side by side in the sequel of events. First, we have the nemesis 

1 In my Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist : Chapter X. 
141 



142 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

upon the wrongdoer ; a double nemesis, for Lear receives only ill 
from the daughters unjustly exalted, only good from the Cordelia 
he has injured. Again, in the sufferings of the innocent Cordelia 
and Kent we see a second consequence of Lear's wrong. For 
a third, we note, in the adulterous intrigues of Goneril and Regan, 
how power in the hands of the evil is used by them only to work 
out their own destruction. The problem as thus stated is dupH- 
cated in the underplot : in the family of Gloucester a father is 
misled into an unnatural distribution of power, power being 
wrongfully taken from the good (Edgar) and assigned to the 
bad (Edmund); there is the same triple series of consequences — 
the double nemesis on the wrongdoer, the sufferings of the inno- 
cent, the unrighteous exaltation used by Edmund for the intrigues 
in which he meets his doom. Again : the special interest of the 
Court Fool which is introduced into this play serves to emphasise 
a plot of this kind ; it is just where Lear's sufferings at the hands 
of his daughters might divert our sympathies into a different 
channel that the Jester's part, with its strange compound of idle 
fooling with home thrusts of rebuke, comes to keep before us the 
idea that Lear is only meeting the solution of the problem his own 
rash act has set up. One more interest completes the plot of 
Lear. Though the underplot is a duplication of the main plot, 
yet there is a difference of spirit between the two. When Lear 
would sin, conscience strongly embodied in Kent starts up to 
hinder; in the case of Gloucester there is no such restraining 
power, but, on the contrary, the strong Edmund is a force tempt- 
ing and leading his too credulous father on to his fatal error. 
Thus in the dim background of the story is suggested one of the 
fundamental problems of the moral world : how there are two 
types of sinners, those whose environment is a restraining force, 
like an embodied conscience, and those on the contrary, whose 
whole surroundings make one embodied temptation. The wider 
problem is only touched ; something however of solution is hinted 
when we note how the tempter who misleads Gloucester is the 
offspring of iUicit amour, so announced by Gloucester at the be- 



MORAL PROBLEMS DRAMATISED 1 43 

ginning of the play in a tone of unrepenting levity : ^ the fruits of 
the former sins are seen to make the temptations of the future. 

In this play the problem takes the form of disturbed equilibrium 
in the moral world working out to a position of rest. In Measure 
for Measure the movement is of a different character : the com- 
plexity of a situation may present itself to our minds as a problem, 
and the solution will display complexity gradually drawn into 
moral harmony. Much of our thinking on ethical subjects falls 
into the form of antitheses : not oppositions, as when good is set 
against evil, honesty against fraud; but relations of ideas which 
may be in opposition, but also may be in harmony. A twofold 
conception of this kind underlies the plot of Measure for Measure. 
One is the antithesis of purity and passion. For the other, the 
old antithesis of outer and inner Ufe appears in the form of the 
law and the individual. These two antitheses underUe all parts 
of the plot, bringing its complexity up to the level of a moral 
problem; the climax reveals the diverse elements in complete 
reconciliation. 

The life presented in Measure for Measure takes a threefold 
form as it is surveyed from the standpoint of purity. We have 
what may be called respectable life : the law of purity is here fully 
accepted ; there is sin against purity in Angelo and Claudio, but 
their full acceptance of the law plunges them in bitter remorse. 
Between this and its opposite we find, represented in Lucio, that 
which is excellently described by the term ordinary conversation 
applies to it — loose Hfe : respectability is claimed, yet there is 
tampering with vice, the spirit of raillery acting like Milton's con- 
ception of an easy bridge from earth to hell. And in the third 
place we have low life : not only is it vicious, but vice is an accepted 
institution. 

At this point a question arises which is a disturbance to many 
readers : Why should low life of this type be allowed to appear on 
the stage at all? The iniquity of the brothel and the life of pros- 
1 L i, from 9. For the whole chapter compare pages 353 and 354. 



144 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

titution we are unwilling even to name in ordinary social inter- 
course, although all know of its existence. Yet in the poetry of 
Shakespeare we find such life presented ; more than this, we seem 
often led into a sort of half sympathy, not indeed for the thing 
itself, but for some of those who are involved in its evil. 

The question is part of a wider one; and the answer is the 
easier if we look at life from the standpoint of our second antithe- 
sis, that of the law and the individual. No moral scheme can be 
complete that does not make provision for what may be called 
Institutional Ethics : the complex ethical attitude that has to be 
maintained to the institution and to the individuals involved in it. 
War, considered in itself, must be classed as a moral wrong : 
founded on hate, its instruments bloodshed and violence, involv- 
ing at times ruthlessness as a positive duty. Yet who will ques- 
tion that among warriors are sometimes to be found the highest 
types of moral greatness, while the work of war will often serve as 
a school of self-sacrifice and virtue ? Poetry has always known 
how to consecrate the ideal of outlaw life by special types of it, 
although in itself this life is in antagonism to fundamental laws of 
property. Every reader of Paradise Lost feels in the course 
of the poem the attractiveness of Satan as a grand moral person- 
ahty, although this Satan, by his position in the universe, is irre- 
concilably at war with supreme Good, and is seeking to seduce 
innocence into his own perversion. We have to separate, mentally, 
the institution and the individual ; responsibihty for the institution 
is one thing, responsibility of the individual is another. Whereso- 
ever the responsibihty for a war rests, there is terrible guilt ; but 
this does not suspend the moral law for the individuals plunged 
into war without fault on their part. In practical life it may be 
almost impossible to separate the two responsibiUties. The judge 
may not say to the prisoner : The burglary of which you have been 
convicted deserves a ten years' sentence, but, in consideration of 
the magnificent stand you made against the police while your 
young comrade was escaping, I reduce your sentence by one half. 
The judge would be more likely to increase the sentence for an 



MORAL PROBLEMS DRAMATISED 1 45 

additional offence against social order ; yet the irresponsible by- 
slander would nevertheless be touched by self-sacrificing comrade- 
ship, and all the more touched by the fact that it was exhibited in 
a burglar. Now, in all art we who see or read are in the position of 
spectators : we may give our full sympathy to the individual with- 
out any sense of responsibility for the institution. There is, of 
course, nothing in Shakespeare to make the vicious institution 
itself attractive. The Friar voices our loathing of it : 

The evil that thou causest to be done, 
That is thy means to live. Do thou but think 
What 'tis to cram a maw or clothe a back 
From such a filthy vice.^ 

The preacher's moralising on lust as the path to destruction does 
not come home so keenly as Pompey's humour when he finds him- 
self in the common prison. 

I am as well acquainted here as I was in our house of profes- 
sion : one would think it were Mistress Overdone's own house, 
for here be many of her old customers. . . . We have here 
young Dizy, and young Master Deep- Vow, and Master Copper- 
spur, and Master Starve-lackey the rapier and dagger man, 
and young Drop-heir that killed lusty Pudding, and Master 
Forthlight the tilter, and brave Master Shooty the great 
traveller, and wild Half-can that stabbed Pots, and, I think, 
forty more ; all great doers in our trade, and are now ' for the 
Lord's sake.' ^ 

Meanwhile, even in this region of accepted vice, moral differences 
are yet to be discriminated, and our sympathy distinguishes be- 
tween such as Overdone, who is vicious and nothing else, and 
Pompey, in whom, though he may be as guilty as his mistress, the 
salt of humour has kept the human nature from going entirely bad. 
Not only the general field of life surveyed but also the individ- 
ual personages rest for their dramatic interest on the same ideas. 

1 III. ii. 21. 2 IV. iii. I. 



146 THE MORAL SYSTEM Of SHAKESPEARE 

The most important personages of the play group themselves 
naturally around the antithesis of purity and passion. Especially 
interesting is Angelo. The contrast between the Angelo of the 
opening scenes and Angelo fallen is not a contrast to be explained 
by hypocrisy. Angelo is sincere in his devotion to purity, and Isa- 
bella in time comes to see this.^ But his devotion — though he is 
ignorant of the fact until he is tested — is not to a principle, but 
to a cause : Angelo is a partisan of purity. It has become a battle- 
cry between parties ; Angelo has taken his side, and eagerly adopts 
all the livery of his party and enthusiasm of the fight, illustrating 
how zealously a man may strive on behalf of a principle which 
nevertheless has not entered deeply into his heart. The Duke's 
word, " Lord Angelo is precise," suggests the " precisian " or Puri- 
tan ; we hear of "the outward-sainted deputy," of his "settled 
visage," his " dressings, characts, titles, forms ; " the vicious in the 
story sneer at Angelo as if his blood were " very snow-broth," how 
"a sea-maid spawned him," or " he was begot between two stock- 
fishes ; " he himself makes " levity " in Mariana his excuse for 
forsaking her.^ Above all, under the full force of temptation he 
gives us a glimpse of self-revelation : 

Yea, my gravity, 
Wherein — let no man hear me — I take pride, 
Could I with boot change for an idle plume. ^ 

At an opposite point from this Angelo we have Isabella, in whom 
purity is a passion. Not only is her brother's crime " the vice 
she most abhors and most desires should meet the blow of justice," 
but even legitimate passion she has renounced ; she is entering 
upon a celibate life, and desiring a stricter restraint for the sister- 
hood.'* Her innocence is of course spotless from first to last ; but, 
instead of love harmonised with purity, we here have an over- 
balancing as between the two forms of good, and, passionate for 

iv.i.450. 

2I.iii. 50; I. iv. 57; in. i. 89, 90; III. ii. 115; V. i. 56, 222. 
* II. iv. 9. ^ I. iv. 3 ; II. ii. 29. 



MORAL PROBLEMS DRAMATISED 1 47 

purity, Isabella is cold to claims of love. Hence even Lucio 
appears at a moral advantage for a moment, when he presses upon 
Isabella the duty to her brother from which she shrinks : 

Lucio. Our doubts are traitors, 

And make us lose the good we oft might win 
By fearing to attempt. ^ 

The crisis of the story distracts Isabella between claims of kinship 
and defence of outraged purity ; we see the overbalanced nature 
in the cruel rage with which she turns upon her brother in his 
moment of weakness.^ Even before this in soliloquy she has said — 

More than our brother is our chastity. ^ 

No one will dare to contradict : but what do we think of the 
woman who can calmly formulate the principle ? 

Two more types complete this group. Mariana is all passion, 
but it is passion within the law of purity. If she seems to descend 
from the highest tone in consenting to the device by which the 
faithless Angelo is won, yet this measures the depth of the love 
which prompts the sacrifice. Mariana again is an illustration of 
the strange power of love to fasten upon the ideal, to love the 
man not for what he is but for what he is capable of becoming."* 
In Claudio and Juliet we have passion in conflict with the letter 
of the law. Their love is pure, their mutual fidelity inviolate ; 
what they have sinned against is the conventional form of marriage 
which society throws as a hedge around the law of purity, and 
they have done this from motives of pecuniary interest.^ Accord- 
ingly discovery not only brings them into danger, but also plunges 
them in remorse. 

The administration of justice in this story gives us a small group 
of characters, distinguished by their relations to the antithesis of 
the law and the individual. The Provost is perfect in the balance 
of his allegiance to both. As a subordinate official, law is to him 

U. iv. 77. 2in. i. 136. SIL iv. 185. 

* Compare V. i. 430-46. 5 i. ii, from 149. 



148 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

his oath of office, and under the strongest temptation he will not 
violate this ; ^ within this one limit he is seen forever toihng to 
soften the rigour of justice for those with whom he has to do ; the 
Duke recognises this. 

This is a gentle provost ; seldom when 
The steeled gaoler is the friend of men.^ 

Elbow the constable belongs to the shallowest nature of which 
men can be made ; he is fussily all for justice, as that whereby he 
gains self-importance.^ The most interesting of the group is 
Escalus. The administration of justice is a perpetual conflict 
between law as an orderly science and the infinite variety of indi- 
vidual cases to which it has to be applied. The opening of the 
play presents Escalus as deeply versed in legal science.* 

Duke. The nature of our people, 

Our city's institutions, and the terms 
For common justice, you're as pregnant in 
As art and practice hath enriched any 
That we remember. 

But what we see of this magistrate in the action of the play shows 
a bias towards individuality rather than law. He is not weak, and 
if necessary can be severe ; but what he seems to love in each case 
is to study the human nature of the persons brought before him ; 
he will pooh-pooh form and precedent if he can, with humour and 
rough leniency, find some practical course to fit the special case, 
and give everybody another chance.^ We are familiar with the 
idea of lynch law : in Escalus we seem to have lynch mercy. 

When we turn from interest of personality to interest of action 
the character of the play as a problem with its solution becomes 
much more clear. We find in Measure for Measure perhaps the 
purest example in poetry of a moral experiment. This is no case 
of a crisis arising of itself in the course of human events ; the 
Duke, in his withdrawal from Vienna, is designedly contriving 

1 IV. ii. 194. * II. i, from 41 ; etc. 

2 IV. ii. 89. 4 I. i. 10. 6 E.g. II. i. 



MORAL PROBLEMS DRAMATISED 



149 



special conditions in which he will be able to study the workings 
of human nature. But the scientific experimenter knows that 
nature is infinitely complex in its operations ; he can determine 
for himself what forces he will set to work, but as to the mode in 
which they will manifest themselves he must be prepared for the 
unexpected ; he must watch his experiment, use means to keep it 
within the channel he desires, and be prepared with resources to 
meet what may arise of the accidental. Hence the Duke does 
not really withdraw from his city, but hovers in disguise around 
the experiment he has set in motion ; he secretly interferes from 
time to time, and at the proper moment reveals himself and ter- 
minates the situation. Both the complication and the resolution 
of the plot have their chief motive force in the Duke. 

The design underlying the experiment of the plot rests upon 
the antithesis of the law and the individual ; it is a double design, 
with an appUcation alike to the dispensers of justice and to its 
victims. Imperfection in the administration of justice may arise 
from the shortcomings of those who administer it ; moreover, so 
deeply does precedent enter into the idea of law, that the laxity 
of the past gives a tinge of injustice to later strictness. This is 
exactly what the Duke puts to his confidant.^ 

Duke. We have strict statutes and most biting laws, 

The needful bits and curbs to headstrong weeds, 

Which for this nineteen years we have let slip ; 

Even like an o'ergrown lion in a cave, 

That goes not out to prey. Now, as fond fathers, 

Having bound up the threatening twigs of birch, 

Only to stick it in their children's sight 

For terror, not to use, in time the rod 

Becomes more mock'd than fear'd ; so our decrees, 

Dead to infliction, to themselves are dead; 

And liberty plucks justice by the nose ; 

The baby beats the nurse, and quite athwart 

Goes all decorum. 

1 1, iii. 



150 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

Friar. It rested in your grace 

To unloose this tied-up justice when you pleased : 
And it in you more dreadful would have seem'd 
Than in Lord Angelo. 

Duke, I do fear, too dreadful : 

Sith 'twas my fault to give the people scope, 
'Twould be my tyranny to strike and gall them 
For what I bid them do : for we bid this be done, 
When evil deeds have their permissive pass, 
And not the punishment. 

Inspired by this perplexity the Duke has installed in his place the 
two magistrates Angelo and Escalus, representing the two horns 
of the dilemma : the workings of unpitying strictness and of con- 
siderate clemency are to be studied side by side. Angelo awakes 
" all the enrolled penalties which have like unscoured armour hung 
by the wall ; " he will not have the law made a mere scarecrow.^ 
Escalus, urging moderation, addresses himself directly to the per- 
sonality of his colleague : might not even his strictness have 
yielded had he been subject to a sorer trial? Angelo answers : 

'Tis one thing to be tempted, Escalus, 

Another thing to fall. I not deny. 

The jury, passing on the prisoner's life. 

May in the sworn twelve have a thief or two 

Guiltier than him they try. What's open made to justice, 

That justice seizes : what know the laws 

That thieves do pass on thieves ? ^ 

Thus the characters of the men chosen by the Duke are just fitted 
for bringing out one element in the experiment — the relationship 
between law and the personality of those who administer justice. 
But the personalities of those on whom justice is to be exercised, 
not less than the characters of the judges, may raise the conflict 
of law and individuality. Here again may be seen opposite bias 
in the colleagues on the bench. When appeal of this kind is 
made to Angelo, he answers : 

1 L 11. 170; II. 1. 1. an. i. 17. 



MORAL PROBLEMS DRAMATISED I5I 

Condemn the fault, and not the actor of it? 
Why, every fault's condemn'd ere it be done : 
Mine were the very cipher of a function, 
To fine the faults whose fine stands in record, 
And let go by the actor. 

Escalus has no authority to interfere ; but he feels bitterly the 
unequal pressure of justice on different individuals. 

Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall : 

Some run through brakes of vice, and answer none ; 

And some condemned for a fault alone. ^ 

In its general scope then the experiment of the Duke is clear 
and simple : strictness of justice and lenity are to be set separately 
to work. But neither the Duke nor any one else could foresee 
the exact issues that would arise as particular cases set these forces 
in operation. Scarcely has Vienna been left to its new deputies 
when the crime of Claudio — one who has grossly violated the 
outward form of law while he is true to its spirit — brings into full 
play the opposing principles : Escalus emphasises the extenua- 
ting circumstances, Angelo looks only at the offence. But this 
Claudio has a sister Isabella who pleads with Angelo for her 
brother : at once new moral issues appear of the deepest interest. 
The first affects the character of Angelo. To a certain extent the 

Duke had foreseen this. 

Angelo, 
There is a kind of character in thy life, 
That to th' observer doth thy history 
Fully unfold. 2 

The expression " a kind of character " seems to veil a slight doubt 
in the ruler's mind as to what the outer stamp upon the life of 
Angelo might reveal to the assayer ; it is part of his experiment 
that the possession of power should force the character of seeming 
precision to reveal its true nature. But no one could have guessed 

ill.ii. 37; n.i. 38. 21.1.27. 



152 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

in what form the assaying would come : that Angelo should be 
confronted by a purity as zealous as his own, yet wholly different 
in kind ; to use Angelo's own word, that *' gravity " should be 
tempted by "gravity." 

What's this, what's this? is it her fault or mine? 

The tempter or the tempted, who sins most? 

Ha! 

Not she ; nor doth she tempt : but it is I 

That, lying by the violet in the sun. 

Do as the carrion does, not as the flower, 

Corrupt with virtuous season. Can it be 

That modesty may more betray our sense 

Than woman's lightness? Having waste ground enough^, 

Shall we desire to raze the sanctuary 

And pitch our evils there? . . . What is't I dream on? 

O cunning enemy, that, to catch a saint, 

With saints dost bait thy hook ! Most dangerous 

Is that temptation that doth goad us on 

To sin in loving virtue ! ^ 

As Isabella slowly warms to her work of interceding for Claudio 
her womanly intuition penetrates the mystery of Angelo's nature ; 
with the insight of ideal purity, she distinguishes between internal 
and external purity, she catches xAngelo's zeal for the cause, his 
ambition to be its foremost champion. 

So you must be the first that gives this sentence, 
And he that suffers. O, it is excellent 
To have a giant's strength ; but it is tyrannous 
To use it like a giant.^ 

By the mere contact then of Angelo with Isabella a double effect 
has been produced : Angelo has been suddenly revealed to him- 
self, and is being gradually revealed to Isabella. And with all this 
is conjoined another moral issue of high interest : Isabella's own 
personaHty has been drawn into the area of experiment, and there 
is distraction in her soul between passionate purity and brotherly 

love. 

1 II. ii. 163. 2 II. ii. io6j and whole scene. 



MORAL PROBLEMS DRAMATISED 153 

How then at this point does the plot of the play stand, consid- 
ered as an experiment in the field of morals ? One side of the 
design has been fully revealed in the light of events — the relation 
between justice and the character of the judge ; and the conclu- 
sion of the third act can moraUse in the style of an epilogue : 

He who the sword of heaven will bear 
Should be as holy as severe. ^ 

But this stage of the experiment has been attained only at the 
cost of a great moral conflict : Angelo is at deadly feud with An- 
gelo, Isabella the nun knows not how to be true to Isabella the 
sister of a brother Claudio ; Claudio himself is confronted with 
the fullest vengeance of a law which, of all such offenders, Claudio 
has least offended. 

Here then a fresh stage in the plot unfolds itself: the experi- 
menter must come to the aid of his own experiment, and compU- 
cation passes into resolution. The soliloquy just quoted proceeds : 

Craft against vice I must apply. 

The expression may be somewhat startling, for fiction has accus- 
tomed us to associate intrigue with purposes of evil ; but there is 
no reason why secret agency and finesse of contrivance may not 
be employed in the service of good. The craft of the Duke is of 
the craftiest : upon a grave moral crisis and impending sin of An- 
gelo is brought to bear a former moral error of the same man, and 
so used that the one is averted and the other repaired. 

Duke. Have you not heard speak of Mariana, the sister of 
Frederick the great soldier who miscarried at sea 1 

Isab. I have heard of the lady, and good words went with 
her name. 

Duke. She should this Angelo have married ; was affianced 
to her by oath, and the nuptial appointed : between which time 
of the contract and limit of the solemnity, her brother Freder- 

1 III. ii. 275. 



154 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

ick was wrecked at sea, having in that perished vessel the 
dowry of his sister. But mark how heavily this befell to 
the poor gentlewoman : there she lost a noble and renowned 
brother, in his love toward her ever most kind and natural ; 
with him the portion and sinew of her fortune, her marriage- 
dowry ; with both, her combinate husband, this well-seeming 
Angelo. 

Isab. Can this be so? did Angelo so leave her? 

Duke. Left her in tears, and dried not one of them with his com- 
fort ; swallowed his vows whole, pretending in her discoveries 
of dishonour : in few, bestowed her on her own lamentation, 
which she yet wears for his sake ; and he, a marble to her 



By the substitution of Mariana for Isabella, a crime committed 
in intention by Angelo is made to redress his former injury; a 
supposed sin of Isabella saves her tempter from actual guilt ; and 
further, the fancied sin is the price of salvation for Claudio. 

But the unforeseen plays a part in all experiment. It comes as 
a surprise, and yet is perfectly true to nature, that Angelo, in moral 
revulsion and spiritual turmoil at his self-surrender to sin, should 
plunge from one crime to another, from fear of consequences 
basely withholding the price of his victim's ruin, and secretly has- 
tening the execution of her brother.^ The Duke must find some 
expedient to meet this : he intrigues to substitute a hardened 
criminal, long designated for well deserved execution, instead of 
the Claudio whom over-rigorous justice was demanding. But an 
obstacle arises : ^ at the last moment this Barnardine is found to 
be in a reprobate frame of mind, utterly unmeet for death. The 
whole experiment is threatened, when suddenly accident — that 
plays so large a part in the providence of Shakespeare — intervenes 
to save. 



Provost. Here in the prison, father. 

There died this morning of a cruel fever 
One Ragozine, a most notorious pirate, 

1 III. i, from 216. 2 IV. ii, from 118. 8 IV. iii, from 70. 



MORAL PROBLEMS DRAMATISED IJS 

A man of Claudio's years ; his beard and head 
Just of his colour. What if we do omit 
This reprobate till he were well inclined ; 
And satisfy the deputy with the visage 
Of Ragozine, more like to Claudio ? 
Duke. O, 'tis an accident that heaven provides ! 

With this final touch craft has done its full work against vice : in 
all but the outward show of things, reserved for the final scene, 
the main resolution of the plot is complete. 

Meanwhile, in the person of Escalus, the other side of justice is 
allowed its scope, that relaxes law in order to study the individual, 
and find a treatment fitted to each single case ; the paternal jus- 
tice, that hopes against hope for the reformation of the sinner. 
Escalus on the bench has evidently a keen enjoyment in studying 
the human nature in front of him ; he can bandy wit with low hfe, 
and meet it on its own ground.^ The fussy constable he soothes, 
and gently leads up to the idea that society has been doing him an 
injustice in burdening him so long with office. For the prisoners 
the lenient justice of Escalus takes two forms. The first is, in spite 
of plain guilt, to give one more opportunity of amendment ; but 
this proves vain for such ingrained evil as that of Overdone and 
Pompey. 

Pompey. Whip me? No, no ; let carman whip his jade : 
The valiant heart's not whipt out of his trade. 

Where this kind of leniency has failed, there is yet possible mercy 
in another form — discrimination of character. The woman, in 
whom there is nothing for amendment to lay hold of, is left to her 
fate.2 But Pompey, whose irrepressible humour reveals some depth 
of soil in his original nature, has a sphere for himself even in 
prison hfe. He even comes to be promoted — promoted to the 
office of under-hangman : the common executioner however fears 
that one of Pompey's former mode of life "will discredit our 
mystery." ^ 

ill.u 2III.ii.20i. «IILii; IV. ii. 



156 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

The type of character represented in Lucio has also had its part 
in the action. We do not build a gallows for a butterfly ; it satis- 
fies the fitness of things when loose humour is encountered by irony 
of situation : here is a jocose problem and solution. ^ Lucio, 
who is hail-fellow with all men, turns his light wit upon the strange 
Friar ; the raillery that spares no subject, and insists upon bringing 
everything down to its own level, plays upon the character of the 
absent Duke — how "the Duke had crotchets in him," how he 
would have had good reason for dealing differently with sins like 
Claudio's. 

Duke. Sir, the Duke is marvellous little beholding to your 
reports ; but the best is, he lives not in them. 

Lucio. Friar, thou knowest not the Duke so well as I do : 
he's a better woodman than thou takest him for. 

Duke. Well, you'll answer this one day. Fare ye well. 

Lucio. Nay, tarry ; I'll go along with thee ; I can tell thee 
pretty tales of the Duke. 

Duke. You have told me too many of him already, sir, if 
they be true ; if not true, none were enough. 

Lucio. I was once before him — 

Lucio proceeds with confidential gaiety to blab his own misdeeds, 
and hands justice a rod with which to scourge him. He enters 
boisterously into the excitement of the final scene, enjoying his 
own audacity as he puts on to the Friar his own slanders of the 
Duke. Then, when all seems to go against this mysterious 
stranger, Lucio is the first to lay violent hands upon him and pull 
off his hood : levity itself gives the last touch that brings the 
shock of denouement to the plot. 

Thou art the first knave that e'er madest a Duke. 

Thus the complication of this exquisite plot has reached its 
adequate resolution ; the moral problem has been fully solved, 
and the reconcihng force emerges as Mercy in its many-sidedness. 

1 IV. iii, from 154 ; V. i. 



MORAL PROBLEMS DRAMATISED 1 57 

Angelo, in his zealous service for the cause of purity, has encoun* 
tered a shock, reveaUng to him that he is not pure ; giving his sen- 
sual race the rein, he has plunged from sin to sin. All the while, 
unknown to him, his sHghted love has been an embodiment of 
mercy, by dark means restoring him to himself, still innocent as 
regards actions, and for guilty intentions giving the hope that best 
men may be moulded out of faults. Isabella, cold to love in her 
passion for purity, has nevertheless been led to become an angel 
of mercy for her unhappy brother, while for herself she has, with- 
out seeking, found in the Duke a power that will make purity and 
passion one. Claudio and JuUet by their sufferings have made 
atonement to the letter of the law which they have violated, while 
they were true to its spirit, and so have their part in the harmony 
of mercy. We seem to see a reconciling force beneath the course 
of events as we behold levity encountered by irony ; or again, as 
characters that have sunk to the depths find in the lowest depth 
some recognition of what is yet good in them. Surveying from 
all its sides this drama of Justice we catch a majestic presentation 
of Mercy, not as diluted and weakened Justice, but as something 
transcending Justice, holding allegiance equally to the law and the 
individual, giving scope for the warmth of passion while it does 
reverence to the light of purity. What Shakespeare dramatises in 
the concrete, Spenser had already celebrated in ideal form. 

For if that virtue be of so great might, 
Which from just verdict will for nothing start, 

But, to preserve inviolated right, 

Oft spills the principal to save the part : 

So much more, then, is [Mercy] of power and art 

Which seeks to save the subject of her skill, 
Yet never doth from doom of right depart ; 

As it is greater praise to save than spill. 

And better to reform than to cut off the ill.^ >^ 

1 Faerie Queene, V. x. 3. 



VIII 

COMEDY AS LIFE IN EQUILIBRIUM 

The two plays treated in the preceding chapter have illustrated 
two out of the three classes into which the Shakespearean Drama 
is ordinarily divided — tragedy and comedy. It is natural, in an 
attempt to survey Shakespeare's world in its moral complexity, to 
ask, What is tragedy? and what is comedy? Possibly, indeed, 
this inquiry might legitimately be evaded. It is not certain that 
the descriptive title under which a literary work is announced is 
a part of the literary work itself. Obviously, as the words ' tragic,' 
' comic ' are used in ordinary conversation, it is difficult to apply 
them to Shakespeare; what can be less comic than the scene 
between Isabella and her brother in prison? and what can be 
more comic than the Fool in Lear? Moreover, a possible 
explanation for the misapplication of the terms is ready to hand. 
Shakespeare produced his plays in an age which strove to adapt 
all literature to the forms of the literature of Greece. Now in 
Greek drama the distinction of tragedy and comedy was absolute ; 
the two were never combined in the same representation, and the 
criticism of the age understood the difference between tragedy 
and comedy to be just that between the words ' serious ' and 
' laughable.' ^ It would be entirely in keeping with the general 
tendencies of Elizabethan literature that two terms of ancient 
drama should be applied in a modern literature where they might 
really have no place. Accordingly, I have elsewhere ^ advocated 
the use of different terms to express the divisions of the Shake- 

1 Spoudaios and geloios. 

2 In my Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist, page 372, 

»58 



COMEDY AS LIFE IN EQUILIBRIUM 159 

spearean drama. But, whether the terms be appropriate or not, 
the classification they attempt to convey is a real one : to examine 
the principle underlying the classification is the object of this 
and the following chapter. 

The examination here attempted must be distinguished from 
another treatment of the subject often followed, by which concep- 
tions of tragedy and comedy are formed from first principles and 
the nature of things, and then particular plays are tried by this 
conception as to the degree to which they satisfy it. All such 
judicial criticism is outside the scope of the present work : we are 
to form our conceptions of Shakespearean tragedy and comedy 
only from the nature and contents of plays so designated. But 
in carrying this principle into operation one consideration should 
be borne in mind. Every species of literature is the heir of the 
whole literary past: whatever has constituted an element of 
dramatic poetry before Shakespeare may possibly reappear in the 
Shakespearean Drama, in subordination to or as a part of that which 
gives the new species of drama its distinctiveness. A rapid review 
then of certain earlier forms of drama and kindred literature will 
make a favourable position from which to undertake our specific 
inquiry what in Shakespeare is tragedy, and what is comedy. It 
will be convenient to begin with the subject of comedy, reserving 
tragedy for the next chapter. 

The literary evolution of which Shakespeare is a part takes its 
origin, not from early English literature, but from the Hterature 
of Greece. In primitive Greek life, at a time when all kinds of 
social activity found literary expression in some form of ballad 
dance, the ' comus ' was the ballad dance of the revel.^ The same 
persons, it might be, who at one part of the day had in the stately 
and restrained dance of the ' chorus ' breathed their adoration to 
the gods, would at another part of the day throw oif restraint, 

1 The origin of comedy in the comus, and its early stages of development, are 
treated at length in my Ancient Classical Drama, Chapter VII, and subsequent 
chapters. 



l60 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

and, wildly dancing hand in hand through a whole country side, 
abandon themselves to rhythmic mirth and every kind of boister- 
ous jollity. All that the comus uttered was ' comedy ' : thus in 
its ultimate origin the whole spirit of comedy was comprehended 
in fun and self-abandonment. Soon, as we know, a modification 
took place ; the custom arose of halting the comus dance at cross 
roads, while the revellers exchanged bouts of chaff and popular 
badinage with one another and with passers-by ; here we get, 
not fun only, but fun directed against an object, or satire. Yet 
another modification was caused by the pecuHar social conditions 
of ancient Greece. It was a country made up of sharply con- 
trasting states, aristocratic and democratic. Where democratic 
institutions prevailed the license of the comus would know no 
Hmits, and might touch everybody and everything in pubHc or 
private Hfe. Where, on the other hand, aristocracy was supreme, 
it is easy to understand how popular satire would be restrained 
from attacking individuals or political questions ; the energies of 
the comus would be concentrated upon satirising human nature 
in general, or particular classes of society. Accordingly, as a 
matter of historic fact, the aristocratic states of Greece and its 
colonies early brought into prominence a form of comedy depend- 
ing mainly upon social satire, the ridiculing of the quack, or the 
market thief, or whatever type of early society was obnoxious 
to popular feeling : in literary technicalities this is ' caricature.' 
Thus within the limits of primitive literature the spirit of comedy 
already appears to be complex, comprehending the three elements 
of fun, satire, and caricature. 

The evolution of comedy next brings us to a distinct literary 
revolution, which gave the world Old Attic Comedy and Aristoph- 
anes. This revolution consisted, essentially, in the fact that 
comedy came to imitate the structure of tragedy. While the 
former was a rude popular sport, tragedy in Greece — an inter- 
weaving of dramatic scenes on the stage with elaborate choral 
odes in the orchestra — had become a solemn religious ceremo- 
nial, celebrated with great magnificence at the public expense. 



COMEDY AS LIFE IN EQUILIBRIUM l6l 

The mode by which a tragic representation was secured was ex- 
pressed by the technical phrase that the poet " received a chorus " 
from the magistrate ; it was understood that, with the chorus, all 
the expenses of training and mounting were provided for him. 
Now, a phrase of Aristotle in his historic sketch informs us that 
"it was late before comedy received a chorus." The history un- 
derlying that simple statement seems to have been this. The 
comic poets would naturally desire to share the privileges of their 
brethren of tragedy; if they had apphed — as, logically, they 
ought to have done — for a comus, the magistrate would meet 
them with the answer that there was no precedent for equipping 
a comus at the public expense ; they therefore put a bold face on 
the matter and requested a chorus, and at length from some 
friendly magistrate obtained it. Once a comic poet had ob- 
tained his chorus he would have the full privileges of public rep- 
resentation j only of course he must use the chorus, and so cast his 
comedy in the structural form of dramatic scenes separated by 
choral odes. It is true that the chorus — most stately of all bal- 
lad dances — was entirely incongruous with comedy. But incon- 
gruity is itself a comic effect : in this idea we get the distinctive 
spirit of the Old Attic Comedy. It is still, what earlier comedy 
has been, wild fun, satire, caricature ; but in structure it must 
alternate and combine choral songs with actor's dialogue ; above 
all, the presence of the chorus favours the sudden change from 
comic to serious, from popular fun to elevated poetry. The Clouds 
of Aristophanes burlesques the new education by farcical scenes 
representing a rough lout, and his son an effeminate fop, trying to 
learn the new methods of Socrates ; as part of the burlesque Soc- 
rates is made out an atheist, worshipping no gods except the virgin 
Clouds. This gives opportunity for a chorus of Clouds, moving 
about the orchestra with delicate dance motions ; they take a 
small share in the general burlesque, but can also give opportu- 
nity for the highest lyrical poetry, embodying exquisite concep- 
tions of cloud life : how — 



1 62 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

Lightly they rest on the time-honoured crest of Olympus, 

environed in snow, 
Or tread the soft dance mid the stately expanse of old Ocean, 

the nymphs to beguile, 
Or stoop to enfold in their pitchers of gold the mystical waves 

of the Nile ; 
Or around the white foam of Maeotis they roam, or Mimas 

all wintry and bare. 

A revolution in art has thus introduced a new element into Hter- 
ature ; the conception of comedy has enlarged to take in the 
serious. The mixture of tones — sharp contrasts of comic and 
serious, rudeness and poetic elevation — has obtained an estab- 
lished place in dramatic literature. 

A great mass of Greek literature, representing many stages in 
dramatic evolution, has been entirely lost ; when comedy is next 
seen it is in the hands of the Romans. As we might expect, this 
Roman comedy exhibits a great change from the old Attic type. 
We are not concerned here with structural change, such as the 
loss of the chorus, which has left in its place some metrical flexi- 
bility and a tendency towards morahsing. But in its general 
spirit Roman comedy, without losing the old, has admitted a 
new element; it is dominated by what is among the most per- 
manent of all literary interests — the interest of story. The term 
* story ' may cover any narrative of events ; but story par excellence 
is seen where the succession of incidents moves in the form of 
complication and resolution. These terms seem to explain them- 
selves. To take illustration from story in its simplest form. An 
anecdote tells of a disappointed lover wishing to commit suicide, 
only he is deterred by fear — not fear of dying, but of failing to 
die. At last, grown more desperate, he provides himself with a 
pistol, a rope, a phial of poison, and a box of matches, and he 
climbs to a precipice overhanging the sea. He fastens the rope 
to a projecting tree and puts the loop round his neck; then he 
loads the pistol, swallows the poison, strikes the matches and puts 
them in his bosom, jumps off the precipice, and fires at his fore- 



COMEDY AS LIFE IN EQUILIBRIUM 1 63 

head as he jumps. We have complication enough of suicide when 
a man is being at once hanged, poisoned, shot, and burned, to say 
nothing of a death by drowning suggested from below. Resolu- 
tion of this compUcation is found in the simple circumstance that 
the aim of the pistol was bad, that the ball severed the rope and 
the man fell into the sea, which put out the fire, while the tossing 
on the waves before he could get to shore made the unhappy man 
vomit the poison, so that he found himself alive after all. This 
device of leading events into a complication only that the compli- 
cation may be resolved makes one of the most prominent forms 
of story interest for all hterature. In Roman comedy it is the 
pure interest of story, simple or complicated, which is supreme. 
The older elements of comedy are not lost : there is the mixture 
of burlesque scenes with serious moralising; there is plenty of 
satire and broad fun ; and caricature is seen enlarged by three 
specially Roman types, of the parasite (or diner-out), the saucy 
slave joking old jokes like a modern clown, and the sharper. But 
these interests belong to details, or tend to make a separate un- 
derplot ; the main plot rests, not upon the fun or extravagance of 
the matter, but upon the interest of the story itself with its com- 
pUcation and resolution. The Captives of Plautus presents a 
father using his wealth to purchase prisoners of war, in order that 
he may have wherewith to make exchange for his own son, who 
has recently been taken prisoner by the enemy. Among his pur- 
chases is a certain master with his slave ; in reality the slave is 
another son of the same father stolen away in childhood : already 
we have the comphcation of a father unconsciously holding his 
own son as a slave. The complication increases as the captive 
master and slave arrange secretly to exchange positions, so that 
the slave (supposed to be the master) may be retained, while the 
real master (supposed to be the slave) is sent away into the ene- 
my's country to arrange for ransom. In time the father discovers 
the fraud that has been put upon him, and in anger dooms the 
remaining captive (his own son in fact) to the hard labour of the 
quarries. The resolution comes with the return of the other son, 



1 64 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

duly ransomed, and at the same time the arrival of the runaway 
slave who had years ago stolen the child : through the latter the 
identity of this stolen child with the captive doomed to the quar- 
ries is made known, and all ends happily. The working out of 
this complication and resolution is the main business of the play ; 
but through its scenes there flits a parasite of the usual type, with 
monstrous caricature of eating powers and social servility ; he is 
given a slight connection with the main business in being the first 
to announce the return of the son from captivity, for which he 
claims free quarters in the household for life. A main plot with 
interest of story, and an underplot of caricature, make this a 
typical Roman comedy. 

The comedy then of ancient literature embraced all these in- 
terests of fun, satire, caricature, the interminghng of serious with 
gay matter, and, to crown all, the supreme interest of story with 
its compHcation and resolution. One remark must be added. 
Partly through connection of primitive drama with rehgious ritual, 
and partly through mechanical difficulties of early stage repre- 
sentation, the ancient drama was limited to a single scene. Lack- 
ing the device of scene-changing, ancient comedy was prevented 
from presenting the whole course of a story ; it could put on the 
stage only the end or the crisis of the story, leaving other parts 
of it to be inferred or suggested indirectly. In technical phrase, 
the whole of ancient comedy was comedy of situation : its move- 
ment was an opening situation of compHcation developed to a 
resolution. And this kind of movement has come to be called 
* classical,' to distinguish it from movement of an opposite type, 
such as we find in Shakespeare and romantic drama. 

Between the close of the ancient drama and the Elizabethan 
age there intervenes a vast gulf of time : the Roman empire, 
with its Greek-Roman hterature, is slowly passing into the civilisa- 
tion of modern Europe, but passing through ' dark ages,' in which 
literature and art and the higher culture seem in danger of being 
lost in a social chaos, while the one civiHsation which has fallen 
into decay is grappHng with the other civilisation not yet emerged 



COMEDY AS LIFE IN EQUILIBRIUM 165 

from barbarism. Among other changes of this period drama 
ceases to be a vital form of literature ; the stage gives place to the 
minstrel as the purveyor of popular amusement, and instead of 
acted story we get story narrated. At the same time story be- 
comes, more than at any other time, the dominant interest in 
literature. The minstrels were a wandering class, passing from 
place to place and from people to people, and drawing the mytho- 
logical stores of all nations into a common stock ; the dark ages 
became a vast gathering ground for stories of all kinds — stories 
long and short, epic and anecdote, serious tales and funny, narra- 
tives sacred and profane. From the fact that such stories passed 
from spoken into written literature at a time when the Romance 
languages were in process of formation, the term 'romance' has 
come to describe the mediaeval accumulation of story lore. 

In several points the phenomena of this romance are important 
for their bearing on the literature of the future. To this period 
we are indebted for the immense accentuation of story among the 
leading interests of Hterature — the interest of story for story's 
sake, apart from the mode in which it is presented. Again, 
romance gives us, not merely multiplication, but also aggregation 
of stories : literary interest is felt in interweaving many different 
tales into a system. Sometimes a common moral purpose, as in 
the Gesta Romanorum or Gower's Lover's Confession, will be 
made an excuse for a collection of stories. Or, one introductory 
tale will ingeniously be treated as a thread on which to string any 
number of other tales : the Arabia7i Nights and Canterbury Tales 
are familiar examples. But the most important influence of 
romance in the evolution of literature was the fact that it set free 
story from the limitations imposed upon it by the ancient stage ; 
instead of being cramped into the one form of a compHcated 
situation resolving, the stories of romance were free to follow 
natural movement, and exhibit the whole course of events from 
beginning to end. 

Yet another of the phenomena of romance is to be noted, which 
has a more immediate bearing upon the subject of the present 



1 66 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

chapter. 'Tragedy' and 'comedy' passed into romance as terms 
for narrated stories, and gradually a considerable amount of change 
came over the relative signification of the two words. Originally, 
in Greek drama, tragedy and comedy were distinct things, the 
one serious, the other amusing. Later, even within the Umits of 
classical drama, we have seen how comedy enlarged its meaning 
and allowed the serious to mingle with the ludicrous. When all 
limitation due to connection with particular festivals was removed, 
the stories of romance would be still freer to follow human life in 
the mixture of tones, hght and dark drawn closer together in 
tragedies and comedies alike. But a more specific change came 
about, that was destined to influence greatly the drama of the 
future. Fashion is a potent factor in art ; in the latter part of the 
romance period a certain type of story came into fashion, and 
more and more maintained its hold on the popular mind. It 
found expression in collection after collection of story lore, per- 
haps the most characteristic of which belongs to a later period — 
the Mirror for Magistrates. Under this name appeared, one 
after another, encyclopaedias of stories, all cast in one mould; 
the word ' magistrate ' was applied to one who had held any 
exalted station, and the interest of the story lay in his fall from 
this exaltation. Greatness fallen had become the most popular 
theme of story in a story age. Gradually the word 'tragedy,' 
though no doubt it could still be used of any serious story, came 
more and more in the popular mind to suggest this overpowering 
interest of an exaltation and a fall. And, as tragedy was becom- 
ing specialised in its significance, in the same proportion the cor- 
relative word 'comedy' was enlarging to take in any story that 
was not, in the newer sense, a tragedy. This accounts for the 
curious circumstance that the most profoundly serious story ever 
composed, a story leading us through hell, purgatory, and paradise, 
could be entitled by Dante ' The Divine Comedy * : to mediaeval 
ears this need suggest no more than ' The Divine Story.' 

Shakespeare belongs to the Romantic Drama ; that is to say, to 
the amalgamation of drama and romance. The Renaissance 



COMEDY AS LIFE IN EQUILIBRIUM 1 6/ 

terminated the dark ages by bringing fully to light the Hterature 
of ancient Greece and Rome. The masterpieces of this literature 
were spread over western Europe, and inspired new literary cre- 
ation. The magnificent dramas of antiquity became models for 
Elizabethan playwrights : " Seneca could not be too heavy for 
them, nor Plautus too light." But the matter which they under- 
took to dramatise was taken from the story books of romance, in- 
cluding the chronicle histories which were treated as romances : 
here is found the other constituent element of Elizabethan drama. 
The influence of romance, with its long hold on the popular mind, 
was not less powerful than the inspiration upon the dramatists of 
the classical models ; in a Shakespearean play it is clear that the 
purpose to lead up to dramatic situations and effects is not more 
prominent than the purpose to do justice to the story for its own 
sake. When romantic dramas are compared with the classical 
dramas of antiquity, it is easy to see how the powerful influence 
of romance has been able to sweep away all the limitations of the 
old dramatic form; how there is no longer any obstacle to the 
free intermingling of serious and light tones ; how stage repre- 
sentation has had to adapt itself to romantic interest, and, by free 
multiplication of scenes, with intervals between the scenes, make 
provision for presenting the whole course of a story from begin- 
ning to end. 

We are now in a position to take up the main question of this 
chapter : What is the Shakespearean conception of comedy? We 
may expect to find that it will comprehend all that has been an 
element of comedy in the past ; further, that its distinctiveness 
will rest upon the union of drama with romance. The conception 
may be formulated under two heads, which can be treated sepa- 
rately. For the first, we may say that Comedy in Shakespeare is 
story raised to its highest power. 

Even in Roman Comedy the interest of story was supreme ; the 
romance of the dark ages not only emphasised this interest, but 
also widened the meaning of the word * comedy' until it became 



1 68 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

almost equivalent to * story.' In Shakespeare story is raised to the 
highest power as the harmony of many stories. Plot in romantic 
drama differs from classical plot as harmony in music differs from 
unison j it is a federation of several stories, any one of which 
would have made a whole plot for an ancient dramatist. The Mer- 
chant of Venice has already been cited as illustration. Here two 
main stories are taken from distinct books of romance well known 
at the time. One is the story of the cruel Jew : how a Christian 
merchant came to enter into a bond with a Jewish creditor the 
terms of which involved a pound of the debtor's flesh ; how the 
bond came to be forfeited ; how at the last moment it was pointed 
out that no provision had been made for the shedding of blood, 
and on this pretext the bond was upset. The other is the story 
of the caskets : that a father bequeathed his daughter's hand and 
fortune to the suitor who should make the right choice between 
three caskets ; that many failed, but the real lover chose the 
right casket and won the maiden. The two stories are inter- 
woven by Shakespeare in this manner : he makes the desire to 
assist Bassanio, the lover in the caskets story, the motive of An- 
tonio, the merchant of the other story, in his entering into the 
strange bond ; while Portia, the maiden of the caskets, is the dis- 
guised judge who upsets the bond and saves the merchant ; two 
stories could not be more neatly interwoven than when the hero 
of the one is the complicating force of the other, and the heroine 
of the one the resolving force of the other. But the plot of The 
Merchant of Venice includes more stories than these. There is 
the story of the betrothal ring : how a betrothed maiden happens, 
when in disguise, to meet her lover, and entices from him his 
betrothal ring ; returning to him in her proper guise she teases 
him for a while, and then the mystery is explained. The inter- 
weaving of this third story with the other two is on this wise : 
Portia's appearance as a judge in the Venetian court, however 
grand a thing in itself, gives a touch of the masculine at the 
moment to her character ; between this and the end of the play is 
inserted this girlish frolic of the ring mystery, and the heroine's 



COMEDY AS LIFE IN EQUILIBRIUM 1 69 

character is felt to be exquisitely balanced before the curtain falls. 
Again, place is found in the plot for a fourth story. The story of 
the Jew involves an interval of three months between the signing 
of the bond and its falHng due ; instead of supposing an interval 
between the acts, Shakespeare introduces a new interest — the 
elopement of Jessica the Jew's daughter with the Christian 
Lorenzo, and thus fills the gap of three months with a succession 
of busy scenes, converting a weakness into a strength. These 
four distinct stories move side by side through the scenes of the 
play, supporting one another by a sort of dramatic counterpoint, 
Hke the four parts of a musical harmony. In reality, the plot of 
The Merchant of Venice is even more complex than this, and two 
out of the four stories are duplicated : not only Portia, but also 
her maid Nerissa has an adventure with a betrothal ring ; just as 
the Jew's daughter is wedded to a Christian husband, so his 
roguish servant Launcelot is transferred to Christian service.^ 

A Shakespearean comedy then is a harmony of many stories. 
But, while the term may mean a simple sequence of events, we 
have seen that story par excellence is found where the move- 
ment leads us through a complication of affairs to a resolution. 
Hence it is natural to find that a large proportion of the stories in 
Shakespeare's plots are compUcated and resolved. Such compli- 
cation and resolution may take a great variety of different forms. 
Sometimes we have ' error ' — that is, mistaken identity — and 
the recognition that ends it : Plautus had made a plot out of the 
confusion between two twin brothers, the Comedy of Errors du- 
plicates the entanglement by giving the twin brothers slaves who 
are twins. Sometimes we have folly and its exposure : Parolles 
moves through the scenes of AWs Well That End's Well posing as 
a hero and man of miUtary erudition, until a conspiracy betrays him 
in his real character as a coward and a fool. Or the complication 
may consist in peril and the resolution in release : ^geon in the 
Comedy of Errors stands in danger of his Hfe up to the point 

1 Compare the scheme of the plot in the Appendix, below, page 347. 



I/O THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

where accident brings salvation as he is on his way to the block. 
Play after play will give examples of the complication of intrigue, 
to which the resolution may come either in the form of success or 
confusion. We have seen in Winter's Tale and Cymbeline how a 
plot may be founded on moral fall and restoration ; in Measure 
for Measure on a moral problem and its solution. Comphcation 
and resolution is an abstract idea, which may manifest itself in any 
number of different concrete forms. 

The intensification of story interest in Shakespearean comedy 
goes further still. Not only do we find individual stories that 
enter into a plot complicated and resolved : we further find clash 
and disentanglement between these complicated and resolved 
stories; more even than this, analysis can sometimes trace how 
there is clash and disentanglement between these clashes of stories. 
This can be made clear only by a somewhat detailed analysis of 
particular plays. 

The main plot of Twelfth Night^ is a complex story of love : 
that particular type of love which in Elizabethan drama is called 
fancy, where some waywardness or whim, or perhaps accident, has 
had much to do with determining choice. Three personages 
appear : Orsino the duke, Olivia the heiress, and Viola, the ship- 
wrecked girl who for safety takes the disguise of a page. Each 
of the three is the centre of a love story ; in each case the love is 
complicated by rejection, yet attains a happy conclusion. Any 
one of these three loves could be separated from the rest of the 
play, and narrated as a complete story in itself. In the actual plot 
however the three love stories are made to clash together into a 
common entanglement, owing to the mistaken identity of the girl 
taken for a page. Viola has no sooner entered as a page into the 
service of the Duke than she secretly falls in love with her master ; 
the Duke has long been in love with the heiress Olivia, who will 
have nothing to do with him, but mopes in solitude ; when the 
Duke sends his pretty page with messages of love to his mistress, 

1 Compare the scheme of the plot in the Appendix, below, page 340. 



COMEDY AS LIFE IN EQUILIBRIUM 171 

this is not more cruel to the disguised Viola than fatal to Olivia, 
who at once falls hopelessly in love with the messenger page. 
Three separate loves have clashed into a triangular duel of disap- 




pointed fancy: Orsino in love with Olivia, Olivia in love with 
Viola, Viola in love with Duke Orsino. The disentanglement 
comes when a twin brother of Viola, Sebastian, appears on the 
scene : Olivia unconsciously transfers her fancy to this Sebastian, 
and is married before she discovers her mistake ; Orsino, having 
lost Olivia, is free to receive the love of Viola when she appears as 



jViffivd* 




a girl ; and Viola's secret love can be confessed when her brother's 
arrival leads her to drop her disguise. The triangular duel has 
resolved into a parallelogram of the forces of love and kinship : 
two happy couples, a pair of friends who could not be lovers, 
a brother and a sister. The main plot then of this play has 
appeared as a clash, due to mistakes of identity, with subsequent 
disentanglement, between three love stories, each of which, looked 
at in itself, is complicated and resolved. 

The underplot of the play is totally different in matter, but 
identical in form. Instead of a triangular duel in love we have a 
triplet of folhes. Somewhat after the fashion of the moral scale 
of wrongs already noted in Cymbeliiie} we have in this play a grad- 

1 Above, page ^-j. 



172 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

uation of the folly — three types that make a descending scale 
as viewed from the standpoint of the natural. Sir Toby Belch 
(with whom may be classed Maria) exhibits the natural fooling 
which seems no more than a vent for health and high spirit. Sir 
Andrew Aguecheek joins in the folly : but in this case we have, 
not a genuine article, but a wretched imitation. When Sir Toby 
will follow the mischievous Maria " to the gates of Tartar," Sir 
Andrew puts in his " I'll make one too : " the single phrase sums 
up all there is in this imitative folly, struggling, without any sense 
of the ludicrous, to copy the outside ways of funny people, and 
laboriously learn to be gay. At a still further remove from what is 
natural we may place Malvoho's artificial antagonism to frivolity ; 
— artificial, for care is taken to show that Malvolio is no genuine 
precisian. 

The devil a puritan that he is, or anything constantly, but a 
time-pleaser ; an affectioned ass, that cons state without book 
and utters it by great swarths : the best persuaded of himself, 
so crammed, as he thinks, with excellencies, that it is his 
grounds of faith that all that look on him love him.i 

Each of these three types makes a separate story of folly and its 
exposure. Sir Toby, by sheer force of boisterous jollity, domi- 
nates the scenes until his practical joking is tried on a stouter man 
than himself; the imitator Aguecheek as usual is with him, and 
both encounter the same shock. 

Olivia. Whaf s the matter? 

Sir And. He has broke my head across and has given Sir 
Toby a bloody coxcomb too : for the love of God, your help ! 
I had rather than forty pound I were at home.^ 

For Sir Toby and his natural folly exposure ends in nothing 
worse of penance than marriage with the maid Maria ; the paltry 
imitator has the ignoble end of being cast off even by his model, 
who calls him an ass-head and a coxcomb and a gull. For the 
folly of Malvolio, that runs so counter to ordinary human nature, 

1 Twelfth Night: II. iii. 159. 2 y. i. 178. 



COMEDY AS LIFE IN EQUILIBRIUM 1 73 

a far worse fate is reserved : his self-importance is played upon by 
a deep conspiracy, and he is led to come, cross-gartered and in 
yellow stockings, into his mistress's presence and smile his un- 
gainly courtship, until he has to be put in restraint, while his 
indignant protests are read ingeniously as symptoms of madness. 
But these three stories of folly are not separate in the plot of the 
play : two of them are seen to clash with the third, as Toby, 
Maria and Aguecheek devise the conspiracy against Malvolio, the 
more natural of the foUies uniting against that which is wholly un- 
natural : ^ this clash of stories finds its disentanglement only in the 
mutual explanations which conclude the drama. The underplot, like 
the main plot, is seen to exhibit a clash and disentanglement between 
three stories, each of which is itself complicated and resolved. 

Already in this play we have two distinct systems of stories, 
a main plot and an underplot, and each in itself is a clash between 
three complicated stories. The entanglement increases as the 
two systems are brought into conflict, the underplot clashing with 
the main plot. Sir Toby is forever drawing out the unconscious 
absurdity of Aguecheek, having as his hold upon him Aguecheek's 
absurd pretensions to the hand of Olivia. At one point Sir Toby 
sees his chance in the handsome youth who comes backward and 
forward between the Duke and Olivia : this is of course the Viola 
of the main plot.^ Sir Andrew is instantly given to understand 
that this youth is his rival. 

She did show favour to the youth in your sight only to 
exasperate you, to awake your dormouse valour, to put fire in 
your heart, and brimstone in your liver. You should then 
have accosted her; and with some excellent jests, fire-new 
from the mint, you should have banged the youth into dumb- 
ness. This was looked for at your hand, and this was balked : 
the double gilt of this opportunity you let time wash off, and 
you are now sailed into the north of my lady's opinion ; where 
you will hang like an icicle on a Dutchman's beard, unless you 
do redeem it by some laudable attempt. 

1 II. iii, from 144. ? From III. ii. 



174 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

Sir Andrew is worked up to the point of sending a challenge. 
The scheme is better than Sir Toby knows : the swagger of page- 
hood is easy to Viola as long as she is only a messenger, but, when 
it comes to fighting, the feminine that is inside the page exterior 
begins to quake. The fun goes merrily on : two parties are being 
drawn into a duel, each a coward at heart, each persuaded of 
the terrible rage and valour of the other, persuaded also that the 
only chance is to make some show of fight. But the joke is not 
all on one side : the twin brother of Viola appears, and Sir Andrew 
is valiant enough to strike him, with unlooked consequences to 
himself, and to Sir Toby who comes to his prot^g^'s rescue.^ In 
these representative personages the underplot is in full conflict 
with the main plot, and the entanglement crescendoes, until the 
dropping of Viola's disguise makes the general denouement. 

Thus in this play of Twelfth Night the ultimate elements of 
plot are a number of single stories, each complicated and re- 
solved ; these fall into two distinct systems of stories, main and 
subordinate, and each system shows a clash and disentanglement 
of the stories of which it is made up ; finally there is a clash 
between these clashing systems of stories, before the final dis- 
entanglement is reached. 

More briefly, in The Merry Wives of Windsor,^ maybe sketched 
another illustration of such complication of compHcation. Here 
we have a primary and a secondary plot. The primary plot is a 
clash of triple intrigues. One is Falstaff"'s intrigue against the 
merry wives : this must be taken as a single action, because Sir 
John's impudence goes so far as to use the same letter for both, 
with nothing but the names different. This intrigue is crossed by 
two others : one is the retribution of the wives, for Mistress Page 
and Mistress Ford have compared their letters, and join in a com- 
mon revenge ; the other is the deep scheme of the jealous Ford 
to facihtate Falstafl''s pursuit until the guilty parties can be de- 
tected. The whole primary plot is thus a clash of intrigues in 

1 IV. ii, from 25 ; V. i, from 175. 
? Compare below, page 343. 



COMEDY AS LIFE IN EQUILIBRIUM 175 

corrupt wooing. For the secondary plot we have natural wooing : 
not only is it innocent, but it is the love of youth and maid. There 
are three suits for the hand of Anne Page : Slender's suit is backed 
by Anne's father, with a view to the union of estates ; Dr. Caius's 
suit is backed by Anne's mother, money being the motive ; Fen- 
ton's suit is backed by Anne herself, for it is a case of true love. 
As three rivals are seeking the same girl the secondary plot (like 
the primary) is necessarily a clashing of three intrigues. All these 
separate interests are being carried on together, until in the end 
the one system is brought into conflict with the other. The wives 
of the primary plot, now in full reconcilement with their husbands, 
launch one more device against Falstaff : he is to be enticed to 
Windsor Park at night, and set upon by young people in guise of 
fairies. But in the details of this device the plotters part company : 
Anne's father will utilise the masquerade in order to have Anne 
carried off by the suitor he favours ; unknown to the father, her 
mother arranges a similar scheme in favour of her candidate ; 
Fenton has a plan of his own.^ In the sequel the primary and 
secondary plots are seen to meet in this common climax of the 
masquerade ; by the personages of the secondary plot the hero of 
the main plot has been put to final discomfiture, the vast bulk of him 
pinched and burnt by the young fairies with their tapers. But this 
triumph of the primary plot has reacted on the secondary plot, 
and disentangled the intrigues for Anne by giving her to her own 
lover. The mutual disentanglement is emphatic, as the discomfited 
Falstaif has his laugh against the irate father and mother : ^ all agree 
to be reconciled and make a night of it. 

Here then is the first of the two elements which make up the 
Shakespearean conception of comedy. All through previous dra- 
matic development the word * comedy' has been drawing nearer and 
nearer to the word ' story ' : Shakespeare's comedies are harmo- 
nies of stories. The harmony is again found to be intensification 
of story interest. The simple sequence of events that is sufficient 

1 Merry Wives IV. iv, vi. 2 y. v. fin. 



176 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAK:ESPEARE 

to make a story is intensified when the events move through the 
stages of compUcation and resolution ; in Shakespeare a number of 
these complicated stories will be complicated into a mutual clash 
and disentanglement; systems of such clashing stories are still 
further carried to fresh clash and disentanglement. As a mathe- 
matical quantity is raised to a higher power by being multiplied 
into itself, and multipHed again and yet again, so by successive com- 
plications of comphcations Shakespearean comedy intensifies interest 
of story to the highest point which artistic receptiveness can endure. 
The second main element of Shakespearean comedy is due to 
the survival of what has entered into comedy in the various phases 
of it that preceded Shakespeare. A drama is a spectacle, and a 
spectacle implies a spectator : all that is presented is arranged 
with a view to the appeal it will make to the spectator's emotional 
nature. In various periods comedy has made its appeal to the 
emotions in various ways. Even in primitive comedy the sympa- 
thies were drawn out in different directions : they must come into 
touch with fun and abandon, with biting satire, with broad farce 
and caricature. When Attic Comedy added its choral lyrics, 
appeal was made to opposite sympathies at the same time, to the 
ludicrous and to the serious. Now, a convenient word to express 
these diverse appeals to the spectator's emotional sympathies is the 
word tones. Instinctively the mind forms a scale of these tones, 
like a musical scale : interest of story may be taken as the indiffer- 
ence point — since this is an intellectual and not an emotional 
interest — and on either side of this middle point we have tones 
rising to the tragic, sinking to wild abandon. 

Tragic 

Serious 

Fancy 

Interest of Story (emotionally indifferent) 

Wit 

Ludicrous 

Satire and Caricature 

Fun and Abandon 



COMEDY AS LIFE IN EQUILIBRIUM 1 77 

Different analysts would construct their scale differently ; perhaps 
no two would agree entirely in their definitions of such words as 
' fancy ' and ' ludicrous.' But this makes no difficulty : precise 
analysis is out of place where the question is of so fluent a thing 
as the emotional effect of a spectacle on a spectator. It is enough 
to lay down the general conception of a scale of tones, with higher 
and lower as more serious and less serious. In this sense comedy 
through large part of its history has exhibited a mixture of tones. 
But Shakespeare goes beyond mixture : we may lay it down as the 
second element in the Shakespearean conception that Comedy is a 
harmony of tones. It is not enough to say that there is no obstacle 
to the mingling of serious and Hght matter : the impression given 
is that a blending of tones into a harmony is a fundamental part 
of the whole design. 

Sometimes this harmony takes the form of balance : for the 
higher tone found in one part of the play an equipoise is sought 
in the lower tone of another part. The Taming of the Shrew, 
with its elaborate crossing of love intrigues, leads us only a Uttle 
way towards the serious side of Hfe and character : accordingly 
this serious is sufficiently balanced in the underplot by the simple 
farce of the pert Grumio, in whom we have a reappearance of the 
Roman type of the saucy slave, joking his threadbare jokes and 
getting his conventional beating from his master. Similar intrigues 
in the The Merry Wives involve however a much deeper element 
of the serious in the brooding jealousies of Ford. To balance this 
we have, not one, but a whole chorus of caricatures : Shallow, the 
rustic magnate ; Slender, the raw material of loutish shyness out 
of which such rustic importance is eventually made ; Welsh par- 
son Evans, with his chop-logic pedantry, and the fire-eating 
French doctor his antagonist ; Pistol, all stage rant, his comrade 
Nym, all emphatic under-statement, with a third comrade, Bar- 
dolph, whose face is humour enough; mine host of the Garter 
Inn, with his gush of good fellowship, and his role of everybody's 
manager ; Mistress Quickly, the go-between, brazen-faced in sim- 
plicity, with voluble inventiveness humouring everybody all round 



1/8 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

for tips. It is another illustration of the same type, where we find 
the intricate tangle of love stories in A Midsummer-Nighf s Dream 
supported, on the one side by the exquisite fancies of fairy life, on 
the other side by the broadest farce of the clowns and their uncon- 
scious burlesque of Pyramus and Thisbe. 

In other cases the effect is not so much the balancing of oppo- 
sites, as the blending of several tones in a rich and full harmony. 
A perfect illustration is Much Ado about Nothing: here we have 
for complication a villanous intrigue that takes us to the very 
borders of the tragic ; its resolution is in the farcical fussiness of 
Dogberry and Verges; while the intervals of the play — like the 
mean parts in a musical harmony — are filled up with a rich 
blend of wit and ludicrous situation, Benedick and Beatrice drawn 
railing into one another's arms.^ In the preceding chapter we have 
seen how Measure for Measure works out a tragic situation in high 
life, throws over low life the clown-like humour of Pompey, and 
links the two together by the more polished humour of Lucio and 
the ludicrous irony of the situations into which his free tongue 
brings him. In TJie Comedy of Errors we see blended in har- 
mony a serious element, the peril and release of ^geon ; the 
comedy of errors itself, with its ludicrous situations ; and an un- 
derplot of mere farce, the Roman type of the impudent slave 
appearing once more. On precisely similar lines runs the play 
q{ AlVs Well: the character of Bertram in its eclipse and recov- 
ery is the serious action ; the folly of Parolles and its exposure 
make the ludicrous tone ; while in place of the Roman slave we 
have the clown his modern counterpart. Only a little different is 
Twelfth Night, where the highest tone is love fancy ; the under- 
plot is ludicrous exposure of folly; and the clown again makes 
a third tone, ingeniously brought into touch with every person- 
age of the play. The Mei'chant of Venice travels far towards the 
tragic : this serious tone is supported by the ripple of wit running 
through the parts of Portia, Nerissa, Lorenzo, Gratiano, Launce- 

1 Compare the schemes of these plays in the Appendix. 



COMEDY AS LIFE IN EQUILIBRIUM 1 79 

lot ; to make a fuller chord is added the single farcical touch of 
Launcelot's meeting with old Gobbo. Perhaps the fullest har- 
mony of tones is to be found in The Tempest We rise to the 
most exalted point of the serious when Prospero, temporarily 
omnipotent, wields dispensations of providence over ''the three 
men of sin " ; with this we blend the simple love interest of Fer- 
dinand and Miranda ; there is the sustained wit of Gonzalo and 
the courtiers who tease him ; lowest of all we have the farcical 
business of the intoxicated sailors led in dread conspiracy by the 
fish-monster Caliban. 

In some cases the emotional impression of a story cannot be 
conveyed by such simple terms as those that have made up our 
scale of tones ; it is something complex and many-sided, and we 
sometimes seek to express it by speaking of the ' atmosphere ' of 
the story. In such cases the harmony of tones will become — 
though the expression strains metaphor — a harmony of atmos- 
pheres. In a former chapter we have noted how, in Winter's 
Tale, as we pass from complication to resolution we meet a total 
change of spirit, from court hfe with high responsibility and grave 
sin to rustic simplicity and harmless roguery; in Cymbeline we 
noted a similar change from the atmosphere of the court to the 
open air life and the spirit of the cave and the mountain. Great 
part of As You Like It is confined within the Forest of Arden, and 
is the old conventional pastoral life, with such conventional loves 
as those of Silvius and Phoebe : a different atmosphere is brought 
to bear upon this as it is played upon by a triple humour — the 
natural humour of Rosalind, the professional humour of Touch- 
stone, and the morbid humour of Jaques, whose carefully culti- 
vated melancholy depreciates everything with a lurid brightness. 
In Love's Labour's Lost we have an atmosphere of the artificial : 
the artificial bond of the mutual vow, the artificial life of celibacy, 
the euphuism of Armado, and the equally artificial pedantry of 
Nathaniel and Holofernes. This appears as the local atmosphere 
of Navarre ; the advent of the French princess and her suite, like 
a change of weather, brings in a new atmosphere of pure gay hu- 



l8o THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

mour, and the impact of the one upon the other gives sustained 
coruscations of wit and fun.^ 

In this connection the comedy of Two Gentlemen of Verona 
needs fuller consideration. The reader of this play, upon the 
first perusal of it, may well be staggered at some of its departures 
from what is natural and probable ; especially the climax up to 
which the whole movement leads, when the false Proteus makes 
love to the unwilling Silvia in the hearing of Valentine.^ Valen- 
tine discovers himself, and taunts his friend with his perfidy; 
Proteus can only throw himself upon his friend's mercy ; whereupon 
Valentine answers : 

Who by repentance is not satisfied 
Is nor of heaven nor earth, for these are pleased. 
By penitence the EternaPs wrath's appeased : 
And, that my love may appear plain and free, 
All that was mine in Silvia I give thee. 

The forgiveness is all well and good : but what are we to say of the 
last line, in which the faithful Valentine bestows the equally faith- 
ful Silvia on the faithless friend? But further study of this drama 
illustrates a certain paradox of interpretation — that difficulties by 
multiplying may diminish. We find every portion of this play 
crowded with unrealities and improbabihties and artificialities, 
until we recognise at last that we are not in the ordinary world at 
all. Over the story has been thrown the atmosphere of the ' gay 
science ' — the poetry of the troubadours and the courts of love : 
the conventional love literature from which love was the one thing 
absent ; which ransacked ingenuity for conceits and riddles and 
twists and turns of mental fencing and word play, cast these into 
songs, or sonnets and ' passions,' and selected the nearest princess, 
or neighbour's wife, or little child, as an animated target against 
which to practise love-making, no more to be confused with a real 
object of passion than the dedicatee of an eighteenth-century book 

1 This feature of the two plays {Love's Labour's Lost and As You Like It) is 
treated at full length in my Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist : Chapters XIV, XV. 

2 Two Gentlemen: V. iv, especially from 54. 



COMEDY AS LIFE IN EQUILIBRIUM l8l 

is to be understood as its hero. Thus, in Two Gentlemen^ no 
sooner have a few lines of natural writing brought out some neces- 
sary point in the action than the conversation will drift into a bout 
of wit-fencing, the chief goodness of the jests consisting in their 
badness.^ 

Proteus. For I will be thy beadsman, Valentine. 
Valentine. And on a love-book pray for my success? 
Proteus. Upon some book I love I'll pray for thee. 
Valentine. That's on some shallow story of deep love : 

How young Leander cross'd the Hellespont. 
Proteus. That's a deep story of a deeper love ; 

For he was more than over shoes in love. 
Valentine. 'Tis true ; for you are over boots in love, 

And yet you never swum the Hellespont. 
Proteus. Over the boots? nay, give me not the boots. 
Valentine. No, I will not, for it boots thee not. 
Proteus. What? 

Valentine. To be in love, where scorn is bought with groans ; 

Coy looks with heart-sore sighs ; one fading moment's mirth 

With twenty watchful, weary, tedious nights : 

If haply won, perhaps a hapless gain ; 

If lost, why then a grievous labour won ; 

However, but a folly bought with wit, 

Or else a wit by folly vanquished. 
Proteus. So, by your circumstance, you call me fool. 
Valentitte. So, by your circumstance, I fear you'll prove. 

Similarly, when a sentiment or a situation is to be expressed, the 
language regularly passes into the form of a sonnet, — not indeed 
the strict sonnet of fourteen lines, but such sonnet-like play of 
thought as would fit the passage for a place in the Hekatompaihia? 

To leave my Julia, shall I be forsworn ; 
To love fair Silvia, shall I be forsworn ; 
To wrong my friend, I shall be much forsworn ; 

1 L i. 

2 n. vi. 1-30. For other examples compare I. ii. 105-29; II. iv. 129-42; Il.vii. 
24-38 ; III. i. 140-51 and 171-87 ; III. ii. 73-87 (note line 69). 



1 82 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

And even that power which gave me first my oath 

Provokes me to this three-fold perjury ; 

Love bade me swear and Love bids me forswear. 

sweet-suggesting Love, if thou hast sinn'd, 
Teach me, thy tempted subject, to excuse it! 
At first I did adore a twinkHng star, 

But now I worship a celestial sun. 
Unheedful vows may heedfully be broken ; 
And he wants wit that wants resolved will 
To learn his wit to exchange the bad for better. 
Fie, fie, unreverend tongue ! to call her bad, 
Whose sovereignty so oft thou hast preferr'd 
With twenty thousand soul-confirming oaths. 

1 cannot leave to love, and yet I do ; 

But there I leave to love where I should love. 

Julia I lose and Valentine I lose : 

If I keep them, I needs must lose myself; 

If I lose them, thus find I by their loss 

For Valentine myself, for Julia Silvia, 

I to myself am dearer than a friend. 

For love is still most precious in itself; 

And Silvia — witness Heaven, that made her fair! — 

Shows Julia but a swarthy Ethiope. 

I will forget that Julia is alive. 

Remembering that my love to her is dead ; 

And Valentine Til hold an enemy, 

Aiming at Silvia as a sweeter friend. 

When we have our minds thoroughly saturated with this atmos- 
phere of the gay science, we shall feel no difficulty even in the 
climax of the play. To weigh in the scales of sentiment the mis- 
tress and the friend is precisely the sort of knotty question which 
the courts of love would poetically take up ; and a pleasant judi- 
cature — which considered it a contradiction in terms for a man to 
be in love with his own wife — would be as likely as not, in the 
present issue, to sacrifice love on the altar of friendship. 

It remains to point out that in this play, as in those previously 
noted, we have a balance of atmospheres. The two gentlemen 



COMEDY AS LIFE IN EQUILIBRIUM 183 

have their two servants : the comparatively heavy atmosphere of 
euphuistic conceit is contrasted with the Hght farcical humour 
of the stable and servant's hall. Speed and Launce have their 
bouts of wit. Where Speed banters his love-lorn master we seem 
to realise that there might be such a thing as a prose sonnet. 

Valentine. Why, how know you that I am in love? 

Speed. Marry, by these special marks : first, you have learned, 
like Sir Proteus, to wreathe your arms, like a malecontent ; to 
relish a love-song, like a robin-redbreast ; to walk alone, like 
one that had the pestilence ; to sigh, like a school-boy that had 
lost his A B C ; to weep, like a young wench that had buried 
her grandam; to fast, like one that takes diet; to watch, 
like one that fears robbing ; to speak puling, like a beggar at 
Hallowmas. You were wont, when you laughed, to crow like 
a cock ; when you walked, to walk like one of the lions ; when 
you fasted, it was presently after dinner ; when you looked 
sadly, it was for want of money : and now you are metamor- 
phosed with a mistress, that, when I look on you, I can hardly 
think you my master.^ 

More than this, the devotion which the gentlemen pour out upon 
their supreme mistresses Launce reserves for his dog. He takes his 
pet's unsavoury oifence upon himself, and is whipped in his stead ; ^ 
yet, like his master, he has to mourn hard-heartedness in the object 
of his affections. 

I think Crab my dog be the sourest-natured dog that 
lives : my mother weeping, my father wailing, my sister crying, 
our maid howling, our cat wringing her hands, and all our house 
in a great perplexity, yet did not this cruel-hearted cur shed 
one tear : he is a stone, a very pebble-stone, and has no more 
pity in him than a dog : a Jew would have wept to have seen 
our parting ; why, my grandam, having no eyes, look you, wept 
herself blind at my parting. Nay, Pll show you the manner 
of it. This shoe is my father : no, this left shoe is my father : 
no, no, this left shoe is my mother : nay, that cannot be so 
neither : yes, it is so, it is so, it hath the worser sole . . . 

1 II. i, from 17. 2 IV. iv. 



1 84 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

Now, sir, this staff is my sister, for, look you, she is as white 
as a lily, and as small as a wand : this hat is Nan, our maid : 
I am the dog: no, the dog is himself, and I am the dog — 
Oh! the dog is me, and I am myself; ay, so, so. Now come I 
to my father; Father, your blessing: now should not the 
shoe speak a word for weeping: now should I kiss my 
father; well, he weeps on. Now come I to my mother : O, 
that she could speak now like a wood woman ! Well, I kiss 
her, why, there 'tis ; here's my mother's breath up and down. 
Now come I to my sister ; mark the moan she makes. Now 
the dog all this while sheds not a tear, nor speaks a word ; but 
see how I lay the dust with my tears.^ 

The balancing of atmosphere with atmosphere can hardly go 
further than when tours-de-force of doggie sentiment are used to 
counterpoise high-flown sentimentalism of the gay science. 

Under these two heads then may be formulated the Shake- 
spearean conception of comedy : story raised to its highest power 
of complexity, and the harmony of tones. Comedy so constituted 
stands in a clear relation to the moral order of the universe. It 
presents life in equilibrium : every intricacy of complication fitted 
with its due resolution, as when musical discords melt into con- 
cords ; the higher tones of our nature supported by or blended 
with the lower tones in full emotional harmony. And the cor- 
relative conception is at once suggested, that in tragedy we have 
equilibrium overthrown. This last is the subject of the chapter 
that follows. 

1 II. iii. 



IX 

TRAGEDY AS EQUILIBRIUM OVERTHROWN 

The received classification of Shakespeare's plays is positive as 
regards comedies. Between tragedies and histories the line is 
difficult to draw, and the terms are not mutually exclusive. The 
relation of the histories to the moral system of Shakespeare 
will appear in connection with another part of this work : ^ the 
immediate question is as to the Shakespearean conception of 
tragedy. It has been in the main anticipated by the discussion 
of the preceding chapter. 

Shakespeare, we have seen, represents romantic drama: the 
union of drama and romance. The latter term must be stretched 
to include the chronicle histories, and such a work as Plutarch ; 
these are treated in the same spirit as the ordinary story books of 
romance, for of history in the modern scientific sense there was no 
thought. By the other component element, drama, is meant the 
revived dramatic literature of Greece and Rome. There was of 
course a Mediaeval Drama — of miracle plays, mysteries, moralities, 
interludes, histories —which extended into the Shakespearean age ; 
and there is evidence that some of its histories were utilised as 
materials for the preparation of Shakespearean dramas. But this 
does not alter the fact that, considered as a species in literature, 
the Shakespearean drama made a fresh start, under the inspiration 
of the revived classical dramas and the accumulated stores of 
romance. I do not mean to suggest that the Mediaeval Drama was 
entirely without influence on the coming drama of the Renaissance : 
but the influence was of an indirect kind. It may be said indeed 
that the Mediaeval is an anticipation of the Romantic Drama. Part 

1 Chapter XIII. 
185 



1 86 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

of the wealth of story accumulated in the age of romance consisted 
in sacred story — the narrative of the Bible and the lives of the 
saints ; to act these sacred stories for a populace that could not 
read them was the original purpose of the miracle plays, however 
much they may have widened their design subsequently. Thus 
the essence of the Mediaeval, as of the Romantic Drama, was the 
appHcation of dramatic form to story material, the story being of 
at least equal importance with the dramatic effects. The influence 
of audiences trained for generations in dramatised story by the 
miracle plays, and similar shows, was a powerful bulwark to the 
poets of the Romantic Drama, in their struggle against a criticism 
that would have subjected the stage again to the limitations of 
pre-romance drama. Without ignoring then this influence of the 
Mediaeval Drama we may nevertheless say that the Romantic Drama 
of Shakespeare has its roots in ancient drama and in romance ; 
in these two directions we are to look if we are inquiring what 
may be expected to enter into the Shakespearean conception of 
tragedy. 

In Greek literature tragedy and comedy were distinct, and 
tragedy was ' serious ' drama. The popular idea that a tragedy is 
a play which ends unhappily, as opposed to comedies with their 
happy endings, will not bear confronting with the masterpieces 
of antiquity. ^schylus's Trilogy of Orestes ends with Orestes 
delivered and the magnificent festival of the Eumenides; the 
(Edipus at Colonus of Sophocles, after heart-rending spectacles 
of suffering, displays the exaltation of its hero ; no play could 
have a happier ending than the Alcestis of Euripides : yet all these 
are tragedies. It was not the nature of the movement, but the 
serious tone that made a tragedy to the Greeks. It could hardly 
be other than serious, for Greek tragedy was a religious service, 
commencing with ritual at the altar of Dionysus ; the choral odes 
led the thoughts of the audience 4n religious meditation, like the 
anthems and hymns of a modern choir ; the acted scenes were 
sacred myths, like the acted sermon of the miracle play. The 
criticism of the age laid its emphasis on this serious character of 



TRAGEDY AS EQUILIBRIUM OVERTHROWN 1 8/ 

tragedy, in Aristotle's definition of it as imitation of a " worthy, 
illustrious, perfect " action ; he makes its moral purpose that of 
purifying the emotions of pity and terror. Close analysis may 
detect, especially in plays of Euripides, some appearance of lighter 
matter as relief; but to the end of the ancient literature the con- 
ception of tragedy was sufficiently defined by its sombre tone. 

It was under the influence of romance that the original concep- 
tion came to be modified. We have seen in the preceding chap- 
ter how the words tragedy and comedy were used of the narrated 
stories of the dark ages ; how in the freedom of minstrel narration 
some rapprochement took place between the two terms, tragedy 
admitting more of the comic and comedy more of the tragic. 
What is more important than this, we have seen how, towards the 
close of the dark ages, a turn of fashion in popular taste produced 
a literary impulse of long continuance, destined to influence more 
than anything else the conception of tragedy in the future. A 
single type of serious story predominated over all others. From 
the time of Henry of Huntingdon in the twelfth century, and his 
Cofitempt of the World, there appeared collections of tragedies 
the interest of which lay in presenting the illustrious of mankind 
falling into ruin or obscurity ; such writers as Boccaccio, with his 
De Casibus Illustrium Virorum, and Lydgate, with his Falls of 
Princes, made their contributions to this popular form of litera- 
ture. The hold which this type of tragedy had on the public 
mind even in the Elizabethan age is evidenced by the number 
of successive works which bear the common title of A Mirror for 
Magistrates ; to one of the series splendid contributions were 
made by the Sackville who, in Gorboduc, is recognised as one 
of the fathers of our modern drama. Thus tragedy came into the 
age of Shakespeare with this special connotation of faflen great- 
ness ; it is serious story with a tendency to a single type of seri- 
ousness. As comedy has enlarged to the general presentation 
of life in equiUbrium, so tragedy has specialised to the concep- 
tion of equilibrium overthrown. A tragedy is, to Shakespeare's 
audience and to Shakespeare, a story of a fall. 



1 88 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

Sometimes in Shakespearean tragedy we have the career and 
the fall of an evildoer ; scarcely any other motive will be found 
to underlie the play of Richard the Second. Elsewhere the plot 
is made by the fall of many : as we observe the career of Richard 
the Third, we see his life an agency of doom to all around him, 
in his death he himself becomes a victim. In such a play as 
Romeo and Juliet the tragedy lies in the fall of the innocent. 
Yet another variety appears in Lear or Othello : the hero is here 
great and noble, the tragic interest lies in watching how, in the 
mysteries of providence, the small sin or omission overbalances 
the general nobility, and there is the same end of ruin. In other 
cases the idea of the outer and the inner life comes in : for the 
various personages of Henry the Eighth the fall in the world with- 
out is a rise in the life within ; even in Antony and Cleopatra 
something of a higher life is seen to spring up amid the ruin of a 
righteous doom. But in all cases aHke, what we see of fall is 
a fall from which there is no recovery ; tragedy is a complication 
never to be resolved. 

In the case of comedy the equilibrium appeared, not only in 
the movement of the story, which balanced complication with 
resolution, but also in the balance and harmony of light and 
serious tones. The converse applies to Shakespearean tragedy : 
in tone, as well as in movement, equilibrium is overthrown. The 
mixture of tones in tragedy is no balance : the serious preponder- 
ates altogether over the light, is intensified the more because of 
the presence of this lighter matter. It is a fundamental principle 
of our mental economy, that the stronger emotions are soon ex- 
hausted into apathy ; those dramatists will draw the most of pity 
and terror out of us who know how, at the proper points, to relieve 
this pity and terror with opposite tones of feeling. The more 
Shakespeare's dramas are examined, the more evident it will be 
that the principle of relief is the law underlying the mixture of 
tones in tragedy. 

In the tragedy of Richard the Second no relief appears in the 
form of humorous matter ; possibly we may see it in the spectacu- 



TRAGEDY AS EQUILIBRIUM OVERTHROWN 1 89 

lar interest of the trial by combat. Such interest is found on a 
much larger scale in the successive pageants of Henry the Eighth, 
which however take that play out of the category of tragedy, and 
make it a complex form of drama.^ The fun and abandon which 
made the earhest spirit of comedy have their nearest modern 
counterpart in the clown : the all-Ucensed jester, for whom ordi- 
nary social proprieties are suspended, who may, and must, twist fun 
for us out of everything and out of nothing. The Clown is actually 
introduced, with all his laboured fooling, into Othello : his two 
brief appearances ^ make two breathing spaces for us in the op- 
pressive crescendo of passion. What essentially is the same effect 
appears in Macbeth : the jesting of the professional fool is put 
into the mouth of the Porter ; and his light badinage, standing 
between the horror of murder and the shock of discovery, has 
the effect of the single flash of hghtning that blackens the night.^ 
In Titiis Andronicus is a shghter device of the same kind : the 
only rehef to the accumulating horrors is the rustic stupidity of 
a messenger, who is called * clown' in the other sense of the 
word."* There is again a group of tragedies in which the spirit 
of the professional clown is read into one of the leading person- 
ages of the story. In King John the earHer appearances of Faul- 
conbridge strike us in this vein ; nothing can be more clown-like 
than his reiteration to the pompous Duke of the Hne ^ — 

And hang a calf's-skin on those recreant limbs. , 

But as the tragedy progresses the tone of relief melts out of the 
personality of Faulconbridge, and he becomes a grave and strenu- 
ous statesman. Timon of Athens has for rehef element the mis- 
anthropic humour of Apemantus, called in the Hst of personages 
* a churhsh philosopher ' ; Coriolanus similarly has Menenius, with 
his spleenful mockery of the populace and its leaders ; in Julius 
Ccesar somewhat of the same tone is put into the mouths of the 

1 See above, pages 89-92. ^ Macbeth II. iii. 

2 Othello III. i and iv. * Titus IV. iii, iv. 
6 King John III. i. 131, 133, 199. 220, 299. 



190 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

mob ; in Antony and Cleopatra Enobarbus is the ' plain ' speaker, 
until his cynicism is melted away by the tragic situation : all these 
are but examples of the relief element of the clown drawn within 
the personaUties of the story. It may be added that in Richard the 
Third the relief seems to be the grim humour of the hero in the 
midst of his devilry, until he loses his equanimity in the toils of 
fate. In Romeo and Juliet the reheving wit is distributed through 
the parts of Mercutio, the Nurse, and the Musicians : it has all 
disappeared before the final climax. 

In two of Shakespeare's most famous tragedies the relief ele- 
ment is of a much more elaborate kind. If analysis be applied 
to the fooling of the Shakespearean jester a leading element will be 
found to be the incongruity and incoherence of its matter, in 
this case of course intentional incoherence. But the unconscious 
incoherence of a disordered brain may be used with somewhat of 
the same effect. It has been contended indeed that there is a real 
difference of sympathetic temperament between an Elizabethan 
and a modern audience ; that the symptoms of madness which 
are so pathetic to us were to our ancestors simply funny. How- 
ever this may be, it is clear that the wildness of insanity is used 
in Shakespeare's plays as a variation and relief to tragedy. A mas- 
terly example of this usage is seen in King Lear. As the old man's 
brain begins to break down under his daughters' unkindness, he 
passes first into the stage of hysteria. 

O, how this mother swells up toward my heart ! 
Hysterica passio, down, thou climbing sorrow, 
Thy element's below. ^ 

Later his words and actions are helpless insanity. 

O, matter and impertinency mixM ! 
Reason in madness ! ^ 

Side by side with this insanity we have the feigned idiotcy of 
Edgar : sometimes meaningless nonsense, sometimes approach- 
ing the mocking nonsense of the typical clown. 

1 Lear II. iv. 56. 2 iv. vi. 178. 



TRAGEDY AS EQUILIBRIUM OVERTHROWN 191 

Lear. What hast thou been ? 

Edgar. A serving-man, proud in heart and mind; that 
curled my hair ; wore gloves in my cap ; served the lust of 
my mistress' heart, and did the act of darkness with her ; swore 
as many oaths as I spake words, and broke them in the sweet 
face of heaven : one that slept in the contriving of lust, and 
waked to do it: wine loved I deeply, dice dearly; and in 
woman out-paramoured the Turk : false of heart, light of ear, 
bloody of hand ; hog in sloth, fox in stealth, wolf in greedi- 
ness, dog in madness, lion in prey. Let not the creaking of 
shoes nor the rustling of silks betray thy poor heart to woman : 
keep thy foot out of brothels, thy hand out of plackets, thy pen 
from lender's books, and defy the foul fiend. 

Still through the hawthorn blows the cold wind. 

Says suum, mun, ha, no, nonny. 

Dolphin, my boy, my boy, sessa ! let him trot by.^ 

When a third type of nonsense — the regular clown or jester — 
is added we get, through the central scenes of King Lear, a trio 
of madnesses — real, assumed, professional — mingling their inco- 
herent ravings : a fourth form of wildness, the raging of the tem- 
pest outside, plays a dreadful accompaniment. So complex is the 
relief element in this tragedy. 

An equally elaborate treatment of relief is found in Hamlet. As 
a first element we have the assumed madness of Hamlet himself. 
Hamlet is never mad : the poet's treatment is so clear on this 
point that I can only express astonishment that any different view 
should have crept into criticism. At the beginning of the story, 
even before the excitement of the Ghost Scene, the hero appears 
as a man of bitter irony, veiling a tone of feeling with an opposite 
tone of expression. 

Horatio. My lord, I came to see your father's funeral. 
Hamlet. I pray thee, do not mock me, fellow-student ; 
I think it was to see my mother's wedding. 

1 III. iv. 87. 



192 THE MORAL SYSlEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

Horatio. Indeed, my lord, it followed close upon. 
Hatnlet. Thrift, thrift, Horatio ! the funeral baked-meats 
Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables.^ 

When suddenly has come the shock of a revelation — a revelation 
of horror taking the dubious form of a communication from the 
supernatural world — it is small wonder that a man of this temper- 
ament should be driven for a moment to hysteric irony. 

villain, villain, smiling, damned villain ! 
My tables, — meet it is I set it down, 

That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain. ^ 

In this mood Hamlet is rejoined by his comrades ^ : when he sees 
the astonishment on their faces at his own wild irony, his quick 
mind catches the thought of using this hysteric mockery as a 
stalking-horse behind which he may watch the dreadful situation 
until he can see how to act. He not only so resolves, but he 
takes his comrades into his confidence. 

But come ; 
Here, as before, never, so help you mercy, 
How strange or odd soe'er I bear myself. 
As I perchance hereafter shall think meet 
To put an antic disposition on, 
That you, at such times seeing me, never shall 
With arms encumbered thus, or this head-shake, 
Or by pronouncing of some doubtful phrase. 
As * Well, well we know,' or '• we could, an if we would,' 
Or, < If we list to speak,' or < There be, an if they might,' 
Or such ambiguous giving out, to note 
That you know aught of me : this not to do. 
So grace and mercy at your most need help you. 
Swear.* 

The scenes that follow are a simple carrying out of this plan : 
like the original Brutus, Hamlet hides behind an "antic dispo- 

1 Hamlet I. ii. 176. 8 i. y, from iii. 

2 I. V. 106. 4 I. y. 168. 



TRAGEDY AS EQUILIBRIUM OVERTHROWN 193 

sition " while he waits his chance to act ; at any moment he can 
drop his assumed wildness. 

Hamlet. You are welcome : but my uncle-father and aunt- 
mother are deceived. 

Guildensterfi. In what, my dear lord? 

Hamlet. I am but mad north-north-west : when the wind is 
southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw. ^ 

This madness of Hamlet then, assumed for a specific purpose 
in the movement of the story, serves also as relief : the hysterical 
incoherence of the supposed madman is used to mock king and 
courtier, and to mock even Ophelia herself, whom in the general 
hollowness of all appearances Hamlet has come to doubt. With 
this is combined, as in Lear^ another form of reUef, the real mad- 
ness of Ophelia, so piteous in its incoherences. Nor is this all. 
It must be remembered that the essential idea of relief in tragedy 
is not necessarily the minghng of comic with serious : any other 
variation of emotional tone may serve, if it is used to break the 
sustained sense of movement towards a tragic climax. Such an 
emotional break may be found in the uncanny thrill of the Ghost 
Scenes, varying the gloomy with touches of the horrible. I would 
recognise another variation in the simulated passion of the actors ; 
this is an effect more obvious on the stage than in the mere read- 
ing of the drama, and Hamlet himself seems to note something of 
the kind. 

Hamlet. Is it not monstrous that this player here, 
But in a fiction, in a dream of passion, 
Could force his soul so to his own conceit 
That from her working all his visage wann'd ; 
Tears in his eyes, distraction in's aspect, 
A broken voice, and his whole function suiting 
With forms to his conceit? and all for nothing! ^ 

Finally, in the fifth act we have the regular agency of relief, the 
clown, varied into the form of grave-diggers, and professional jest- 

ill.ii. 387. 2 II. ii. 576. 

o 



194 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

ing is turned upon the most gruesome of topics. If this analysis 
be correct, we seem in the play of Hamlet to have an underplot 
of relief matter, appearing successively in five varied forms : the 
supernatural awe of the Ghost Scenes, the hysteric mockery of 
Hamlet, the histrionic passion of the players, the pathetic madness 
of Ophelia, and the weird humour of the grave-diggers. 

Thus it appears that, as the movement of tragedy in Shakespeare 
is a fall from greatness, so in its tone it rests upon an overbalanc- 
ing of emotions : light and dark do not mingle on equal terms, but 
the serious is relieved only that it may thereby be the more inten- 
sified. In all respects Shakespearean comedy and Shakespearean 
tragedy are the converse one of the other, as moral equilibrium 
and equilibrium overthrown. In comedy we watch human life 
plunged it may be in a sea of troubles, sure that natural buoyancy 
will bring it again to the surface, with an exhilaration akin to 
laughter. In tragedy we see human life mounting, but with an 
impulse that has disturbed some secret moral gravitation, that will 
make the height of the elevation only the measure of the fall. 



THE MORAL SIGNIFICANCE OF HUMOUR 

A STORY is told of a man who, being suddenly called upon to 
say exactly what was meant by humour, reserved his definition 
till the next day; the next day he found he would require a 
week, at the end of a week, a month ; by that time the subject 
had so grown upon him that he went into the country for a 
whole year to think it out ; at the end of the year he sold his 
business, and announced his intention of devoting the rest of 
his life to this one question: shortly afterward the man died 
of melancholy. Humour is a thing of so strange a nature that 
he who has most of it can least say what it is ; while those who 
altogether lack it — and they are not a few — have the advan- 
tage of never knowing their loss. Yet this difficult subject 
cannot be altogether ignored in the present work, as a single 
illustration will show. Falstaff , the supreme humorous creation 
of Shakespeare, is exhibited as violating every law of righteous- 
ness and beauty: we who read love Falstaff, yet in no way 
lessen our love of law. This contradiction of itself makes 
humour a problem in the philosophy of Shakespeare. It can be 
treated only in the way of suggestion. 

Some light, though of an uncertain kind, may be thrown upon 
the thing from the word that conveys it. In its ultimate ety- 
mology the meaning of humour is simply moisture. The great 
extension of its import rests upon a physiological theory of the 
Middle Ages, which made the various juices of the body the de- 
termining forces of character ; the blood, phlegm, choler inside 
the human frame made a man sanguine, phlegmatic, choleric ; 



196 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

the arrangement of these juices or humours was his ' disposi- 
tion,' and if they were well mixed he was * good tempered ' ; the 
visible sign of such mixture in his face was his ' complexion,' a 
word which, as late as the novels of Richardson, was synony- 
mous with character. Accordingly ' humour ' was applied to the 
whole, or the separate elements, of a man's character ; the usage 
of Ben Jonson, with his Every Man in his Humour and Every 
Man out of his Humour^ at once reflected and intensified the 
tendency to apply the term ' humours ' to peculiarities of in- 
dividual disposition. Now, such individual peculiarities are a 
great source of the ludicrous ; again, the incongruities or hidden 
congruities in human nature, like other incongruities or congru- 
ities, are a leading subject for wat to play upon. Thus the 
whole range of human nature, of wit, and of the ludicrous, 
are all drawn within the scope of this single word * humour.' 
But in the shiftings to and fro of verbal usage so many-sided 
a word was sure to become specialised more or less. On the 
one side, wit begins to draw away from humour by suggesting 
the cold intellectual appreciation of singularities, while humour 
is the emotion excited by them. At another point, such things 
as scorn and satire become differentiated by the fact that, 
while aiming at the ridiculous, they also imply hostility ; it is 
the great note of humour, on the contrary, that it does not lose 
sympathy with what it ridicules, and a man is never more 
humorous than when he enjoys a laugh at his own expense. 
But the sympathetic sense of the ludicrous, which is the specialty 
of humour, is free to range over the whole of human nature, 
until, in the humour of Thackeray or Bret Harte, w^e often 
laugh only to keep from crying. To all of which it may be 
added, that the original signification of the word has never been 
altogether lost, and humour is always the most fluent of all the 
emotions that have connection with the ludicrous. 

As a technical term of the drama, the meaning of humour can 
be stated with more precision. It can be approached through a 
series of steps, of which the first step is the conception of dra- 



THE MORAL SIGNIFICANCE OF HUMOUR 197 

matic tone. We must go back to first principles. Drama is 
not a mere reproduction of real life, but is life arranged as a 
spectacle. If we turn a mirror upon a landscape, we do not get 
a picture : what we see lacks composition and its perspective. 
There is a similar perspective in drama ; what is presented is 
disposed according to the point of view of the spectator, and to 
produce effects in his emotional nature. The emotions in the 
scene may be the same as the emotion to be excited in the 
spectator, or they may be very different ; on the stage two men 
are seen flying at one another's throats, with a woman standing 
by and wringing her hands in despair, and all the while the 
spectator of the play is smiling at a comic situation. The term 
expressing this emotional response in the spectator of the drama 
is 'tone.' Without seeking to define these tones — of comic, 
farcical, tragic, and the like — we have seen that it is natural to 
conceive a scale of tones, the more serious taking place as 
higher, the less serious as lower. Now the foe of tone is mono- 
tone and satiety. Even in real life it is a fundamental principle 
of psychology that the passive receiving of impressions without 
any reaction in activity is dangerous ; if we listen Sunday after 
Sunday to appeals from the pulpit without attempting to act 
upon them, our religious exercises have only made us the more 
callous ; if we for ever cherish sentiments without any effect on 
our conduct, we dwindle into the sentimental. But the spectator 
in the theatre is necessarily passive : if one kind of emotional 
appeal is continuously made to him without variation, he must 
soon become apathetic. Hence the mixture of tones in the 
romantic drama: comedy balancing a succession of different 
emotions into harmony, even tragedy relieving its serious tone 
by what is lighter. From this mixture of tones we may go a 
step farther, and recognise what may be called tone-clash: 
opposite emotions meet with a shock in the same effect. In 
the physical body such a clash of opposites makes hysteria: 
the mobile nervous energy relieves itself by laughter and tears 
together. So, as we have seen, outpourings of an hysteric 



198 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

character make an element in the excited action of Lear and 
Hamlet. Or again, tone-clash is illustrated in the regular cus- 
tom of Shakespeare to use puns in passages of deep emotion ; as 
where John of Gaunt, dying of grief, receives the nephew who is 
the cause of it with a string of puns on his own name.^ Criti- 
cism has often taken objection, on the ground that puns are 
things comic in their nature. But it is their comic character 
that gives them fitness, not for ordinary situations of sadness, 
but for agony that is acute : puns in such cases are verbal 
hysterics. From these successive conceptions — of dramatic 
tones, scale of tones, mixture of tones, tone-clash — we may pro- 
ceed to the final conception of humour as tone-tremulousness, 
like the shake in music ; there is no clash or shock, but diverse 
or opposite emotions come so smoothly together that they flow 
into a single delightful impression. We are amused at the 
violation of the law, and yet are conscious of retaining our 
respect for the law ; we enjoy Falstaff 's humiliation, yet have no 
sense of triumph over the man ; we appreciate the grotesque in 
the Dogberries and Shallows, yet do not cease to feel that they 
are men and brethren. As a supreme effect for the manage- 
ment of tone in drama, the fluency of humour holds contrasted 
emotions harmonised in the spectator's sympathy. 

The humour, the dramatic expression of which is thus de- 
scribed, has a place in a philosophy of hfe. It enters deeply 
into the real life which it is the province of drama to arrange. 
Humour is an emotional antiseptic : the salt of wit keeps senti- 
ment healthy, saves it from the morbid, makes itself felt just 
where the sweet is in danger of becoming the mawkish. It is 
the balance-wheel of the sympathies ; every feeling indulged is 
at the expense of other feelings, and tends toward partisanship ; 
in the rapid interplay of emotions humour is the force that 
staves off an eccentricity which would disturb regularity. The 

1 Richard the Second II. i. 74-85. For other examples compare Julius Ccssar 
III. i. 204-208; Merchant of Venice IV. i. 281; Macbeth II. ii. 56; Richard the 
Second IV. i. 315. 



THE MORAL SIGNIFICANCE OF HUMOUR 1 99 

heart of a whirlpool is a dead calm : humour is such an indif- 
ference point in the whirlpool of the passions. It serves as a 
sounding-board for taste : without it the loud ring of excess 
comes back only in mocking echoes. Humour thus enters 
deeply into analysis of character. Greek thought deified the 
sense of proportion as a moral force under the name Nemesis : 
other powers, like Justice, dealt with right and wrong, but 
Nemesis was a providence which visited every kind of excess, 
which would strike down a Polycrates for being too fortunate, 
or an Hippolytus for being too temperate. Humour is such a 
nemesis in human character, watching over the proportion of 
parts, interposing to save the 'good' from becoming 'goody.' 
It must be understood of course in all these remarks that the 
essential thing is not humour, but the sense of humour ; the 
question is not of jocose expression, but of the mental corrective 
force that lies in an instinct against excess. Humour is thus 
the great contribution of comedy to morals ; it is a sort of comic 
conscience, ever making for moral equilibrium. 

When life comes to be arranged as a dramatic spectacle the 
scope of humour is still further enlarged. It may sometimes 
manifest itself as a suspension of the moral law, in the way that 
enchantment is a suspension of physical law. This temporary 
suspension of moral law is a deep-seated idea in human nature. 
In ruder times it manifested itself in such forms as the Roman 
Saturnalia, or mediaeval Feasts of Unreason ; the powers of 
order were tolerant of the single day in the year when slaves 
might v/hip masters, or a mock pope travesty sacred ritual — 
rude expressions of a vague popular conception that even God 
must sometimes need a hohday. The more refined fluency of 
humour can infuse into regular life a single element of the moral 
Saturnalia ; relieving pompous history with by-play of an East- 
cheap, bad enough as a reality, but excellent as a spectacle. 
Falstaff's tavern bill with its " one half-pennyworth of bread to 
this intolerable deal of sack " typifies the proportions of the 
responsible and the frothy in this humorous unreason. Flashes 



200 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

from Falstaff himself are continually keeping us in touch with 
the idea of moral reversal ; as where the disgruntled pedestrian 
threatens " to turn true man and leave these rogues " ; or where 
he laments the evil times : 

There live not three good men unhanged in England : and 
one of them is fat, and grows old : God help the while ! a 
bad world, I say. 

The moral topsy-turveydom of Eastcheap has reached the point 
of paradox. 

Poins. Jack ! how agrees the devil and thee about thy soul, 
that thou soldest him on Good Friday last for a cup of Ma- 
deira and a cold capon's leg? 

Prince. Sir John stands to his word, the devil shall have 
his bargain ; for he was never yet a breaker of proverbs : he 
will give the devil his due. 

Poins. Then art thou damned for keeping thy word with 
the devil. 

Prince. Else he had been damned for cozening the devil. 

Thus the immorality has become a new morality, and Falstaff 
turns moraliser. He gives us a long and ingenious sermon on 
the moral effects of sherry, which a teetotaller may admire as an 
heresiarch's masterpiece.^ The doctrine of original sin becomes 
a comfort to him. 

Dost thou hear, Hal? thou knowest in the state of innocency 
Adam fell ; and what should poor Jack Falstaff do in the days 
of villany? Thou seest I have more flesh than another man ; 
and therefore more frailty. 

We even hear him solemnly discoursing on the vanity of life : 
only he means, the life of honour. 

Prince. Why, thou owest God a death. 
Falstaff. 'Tis not due yet; I would be loth to pay him 
before his day. What need I be so forward with him that 

1 Second Part of Henry the Fourth : TV. iii, from 92. 



THE MORAL SIGNIFICANCE OP HUMOUR 201 

calls not on me? Well, 'tis no matter; honour pricks me on. 
Yea, but how if honour prick me off when I come on ? how 
then? Can honour set to a leg? no: or an arm? no: or take 
away the grief of a wound? no. Honour hath no skill in 
surgery, then? no. What is honour? a word. What is in 
that word honour? what is that honour? air. A trim reck- 
oning ! Who hath it ? he that died o' Wednesday. Doth he 
feel it? no. Doth he hear it? no. Tis insensible, then. 
Yea, to the dead. But will it not live with the living? no. 
Why? detraction will not suffer it. Therefore I'll none of it. 
Honour is a mere scutcheon : and so ends my catechism. 

Humour is often occupied with the ways of human nature. 
Zoology gravely studies the ways of animals: not merely the 
structures of their skeletons as an element in comparative 
anatomy, but the lightest turn of habit and custom, as that one 
spider spreads a web, another lives in a box with a lid to it. 
The ways of the animal man have a similar interest, even the 
infinite variations of individuality : how carriers talk with ostlers 
in free slang; how a tavern hostess adapts herself to imprac- 
ticable guests ; distracted drawers flinging ' anons ' in every 
direction ; what permutations of the human scarecrow can be 
mustered into Falstaff's company of soldiers; what combinations 
of social absurdities can hold revel in Shallow's orchard. In a 
Doll Tearsheet wit can turn its light upon the crudest humanity, 
as pictorial art can give us a Dutch genre picture. Mine host's 
practical joke in the Merry Wives is a zoological experiment 
that brings the oddities of a parson Evans and a Doctor Caius 
into just the best situation for fully displaying themselves. And 
Prince Henry is a diligent zoological observer, who can repro- 
duce " all humours that have showed themselves humours since 
the old days of goodman Adam to the pupil age of this present 
twelve o'clock at midnight." 

But besides these indifferent things vice itself may be a spec- 
tacle ; there is an interest of monstrosity in morals, as in art the 
grotesque is a form of beauty. The sins of the nursery have to 
be restrained, because they are great things to the little sinners: 



202 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

but, once the nursery door is closed, the adult spectator has his 
keen enjoyment of the joke. So at the other end of the scale, 
vice passes beyond the danger point, and becomes nothing but 
spectacle. Only, the perspective of the picture must be so 
arranged that the spectator really is at the indifference point; 
criticism cannot say how this is to be done, any more than it can 
direct a portrait painter how to catch a likeness, yet to miss this 
is to make art immoral. Dramatised vice is a demonstration in 
moral pathology. In physiology, the disease which may be fatal 
to the individual patient becomes a thing of cool interest to the 
medical expert, who rather prefers a compound fracture to a 
sprain, and may become enthusiastic over the virulent destruc- 
tiveness of a cancerous tissue. There is nothing strange in this, 
for disease is a manifestation of life as much as health. But 
the doctors watching their pathological curiosities in the fever 
hospital take measures to guard themselves from infection. So 
humour is the great moral disinfectant, with its fluent sympathy 
alike for the pathological oddity and for the perfect health. It 
is not the depicting of vice that makes literature immoral ; cor- 
rupt art is the maladroit art which, presenting less or more of 
vice, is clumsy enough to leave unneutralised some of the infec- 
tion, to lay hold of some unwary reader. It is best to leave such 
art as this to die the natural death of corrupt things. Unfortu- 
nately, its denunciation is often undertaken by persons who 
have lost their humour touch, whose sympathies have become 
set and cannot be made elastic. Such persons are a social 
danger, as false prophets who unfortunately have the means of 
fulfiUing their own prophecies. For life is full of things which 
are innocent if left to themselves, but become noxious by merely 
having a finger pointed at them ; if corrupt art has injured its 
thousands, discussions of corruption have injured tens of thou- 
sands. Humour is an essential for a censor of morals ; no one 
is in a state to discuss literary morality unless he can lay his 
hand on his heart and vow that he loves Shakespeare's Falstaff. 
History amply confirms the principle thus laid dowa» Short- 



THE MORAL SIGNIFICANCE OF HUMOUR 203 

comings of this kind wrought havoc with the greatest religious 
revolution in modern history : Puritanism was religion that had 
lost its sense of humour. 

In this way Falstaff is a pathological triumph. His vast bulk 
is a perpetual symbol of monstrosity : he is a creature of bombast ; 
unhorsed, he ' frets Hke a gummed velvet,' he — 

sweats to death, 
And lards the lean earth as he walks along ; 

only a colossus could be the friend to bestride him in the battle ; 
he marches in front of his slim page " like a sow that hath 
overwhelmed all her litter but one " ; pitched into the Thames 
he has " a kind of alacrity in sinking" ; in the wars he prays — 

God keep lead out of me ! I need no more weight than mine 
own bowels. 

Huge in body, brilliant in mind, he has a soul that has forgotten 
to grow up : the elephantine senior bids travellers stand with 

a — 

What, ye knaves ! young men must live. 

He must needs be a lad with the other Eastcheap lads, a ''latter 
spring" in the boisterous irresponsible young manhood which is 
an unconscious prolongation of the nursery life. But nature 
abhors a monstrosity ; great part of the humour of the scenes is 
made by the real youth repelling the artificial, the natural lads 
setting on the ugly duckling who has come among them, until 
even a Doll Tearsheet, as she ogles Falstaff, insinuatingly asks, 
when he will " leave fighting o' days and foining o' nights, and 
begin to patch up his old body for heaven." But he is assailed 
in vain : Falstaff holds the champion's belt for all of the seven 
deadly sins that do not require exertion. Like the pupils with 
the fencing master, the comrades of the old knight make their 
fiercest attacks on him only for the purpose of drawing out his 
irresistible fence. Pelion upon Ossa of shame is heaped upon 



204 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

him, but his audacity of unabashedness refuses to be crushed ; 
he is flung into seas of discomfiture, but the elasticity of false- 
hood brings him up again. All the while we are doing involun- 
tary homage to the strength of moral law in our amused surprise 
at the colossal invention that can rise superior to it. Art is 
always the conquest of some material : in the humorous art of 
these plays moral order has become the stubborn material which 
is being bent to spectacular effect, as the convicted liar ever 
gets the better of the convincing truth. And this heroism of 
moral insensibility is continued to the very end, even to the 
point where the dream spectacle is to reach the inevitable wak- 
ing point. The riotous Prince Hal has become the magnificent 
King Henry ; the Falstaff crew have ridden post haste to Lon- 
don, with the aid of a thousand pounds borrowed from Shallow, 
to enjoy the grand things Falstaff has guaranteed them all from 
his newly exalted chum. The meeting has come, and the blow 
has fallen ; we turn to hear the first words of a crushed man : 
and what we hear is one more flash of the old humour — 

Falstaff. Master Shallow, I owe you a thousand pound. 

To all this it may be added that humour includes wit, though 
the two things are not conterminous. Wit is the finest and 
brightest form of mental play ; the brain has its technique, and 
Falstaff is the Paganini of humour. It needs but an appro- 
priate theme, and some tour-de-force of inexhaustible invention 
comes pouring out. 

Bardolph. Why, you are so fat. Sir John, that you must 
needs be out of all compass, out of all reasonable compass, Sir 
John. 

Falstaff. Do thou amend thy face, and I'll amend my life; 
thou art our admiral, thou bearest the lantern in the poop, but 
'tis in the nose of thee ; thou art the Knight of the Burning 
Lamp. 

Bardolph. Why, Sir John, my face does you no harm. 

Falstaff. No, I'll be sworn ; I make as good a use of it as 
many a man doth of a Death's-head or a memento mori ; I 



THE MORAL SIGNIFICANCE OF HUMOUR 205 

never see thy face but I think upon hell-fire, and Dives that 
lived in purple ; for there he is in his robes, burning, burning. 
If thou wert any way given to virtue, I would swear by thy 
face ; my oath should be, ^ By this fire, that's God's angel ' : 
but thou art altogether given over ; and wert indeed, but for 
the light in thy face, the son of utter darkness. When thou 
rannest up Gadshill in the night to catch my horse, if I did 
not think thou hadst been an ignis fatuus or a ball of wildfire, 
there's no purchase in money. O, thou art a perpetual triumph, 
an everlasting bonfire-light. Thou hast saved me a thousand 
marks in links and torches, walking with thee in the night 
betwixt tavern and tavern ; but the sack that thou hast drunk 
me would have bought me lights as good cheap at the dearest 
chandler's in Europe. I have maintained that salamander of 
yours with fire any time this two and thirty years ; God reward 
me for it ! 

Bardolph. 'Sblood, I would my face were in your belly ! 

Falstaff. God-a-mercy! so should I be sure to be heart- 
burned. 

The prince meets Falstaff on equal terms, and their duets are 
masterpieces of mental fencing. But, as Falstaff himself says, 
he is not only witty, but '' the cause that wit is in other men "; 
right through the Falstaff plays there runs an electric storm of 
brilliance. Even the malapropism of the hostess catches it, and 
the stage rant of Pistol ; we are taught elsewhere that murder 
may be considered as a fine art, but when Pistol is matched 
against Doll Tearsheet we have to recognise that there is a fine 
art of scurrility. At times the wit becomes the regular fooling 
of the Shakespearean jester. The prince and Falstaff have a 
clown duet: 

Prince. This sanguine coward, this bed-presser, this horse- 
back-breaker, this huge hill of flesh, — 

Falstaff. 'Sblood, you starveling, you elf-skin, you dried 
neat's tongue, you stockfish ! O for breath to utter what is 
like thee ! you tailor's-yard, you sheath, you bow-case, you vile 
standing-tuck, — 



206 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

Touchstone himself could not have bettered the prince's 
mystification of the drawer:^ 

Prince. But, Francis! 

Francis. My lord? 

Prince. Wilt thou rob this leathern jerkin, crystal-button, 
not-pated, agate-ring, puke-stocking, caddis-garter, smooth- 
tongue, Spanish-pouch, — 

Francis. O Lord, sir, who do you mean? 

Prince. Why, then, your brown bastard is your only drink ; 
for, look you, Francis, your white canvas doublet will sully : in 
Barbary, sir, it cannot come to so much. 

Francis. What, sir? 

Poins. \_Within'\ Francis ! 

Prince. Away, you rogue! dost thou not hear them call? 

[Here they both call him ; the drawer stands 
amazed^ not knowing which way to go. 

But with the Shakespearean inspiration even foolery is a vent 
for mental wealth ; nonsense is simply sense boiling over. 

But enough has been written on this topic — I fear, too much ; 
it savours of an offence against humour to seek for it a place in 
moral economics. I hasten to conclude this chapter, not with- 
out suspicion that I shall seem to have been training artillery 
upon an ignis fatuus, and demonstrating my own lack of humour 
by undertaking to discuss it. 

1 First Part of Henry the Fourth : U. iv, from 4a 



BOOK III 

THE FORCES OF LIFE IN SHAKESPEARE'S 
MORAL WORLD 

Chapter XI : Personality and its Dramatic Expression in Intrigue 
and Irony 

Chapter XII : The Momentum of Character and the Sway of Cir- 
cumstance 

Chapter XIII : The Pendulum of History 

Chapter XIV : Supernatural Agency in Shakespeare's Moral World 

Chapter XV : Moral Accident and Overruling Providence 



XI 



PERSONALITY AND ITS DRAMATIC EXPRESSION IN INTRIGUE 

AND IRONY 

We pass, in this Third Book, from the phenomena of life to 
the forces which underUe it ; so far at least as such forces of life 
are reflected in dramatic forms. The most obvious of all the 
forces entering into human life is that which we call Will : 
personal, individual will. Of course, to recognise will as a 
force is not to say that such will is necessarily effective or free. 
Muscular power is a force : but I may have exerted all the mus- 
cular power in my body in an attempt to move toward the 
north, all the while that stronger muscles than my own were 
carrying me to the south ; my muscular power was not free, and 
was the reverse of effective, yet it was none the less a force. 
Similarly, the power of individual will may be restrained in its 
operation by forces from outside ; or even the will may un- 
consciously have been restrained by other forces within the 
individual, so that his consciousness of free will may prove to 
have been a self-deception. The present chapter is occupied 
with the force of will ; restraints of will from within or from 
without are reserved for the chapters that follow. 

Our immediate question then becomes this : Is there any ele- 
ment of dramatic effect which is specially associated with the 
force of personal will? An answer will readily suggest itself. 
Scarcely any form of dramatic interest is more prominent than 
that called Intrigue. Now Intrigue is an expression of personal 
will in a very pronounced form : the term implies conscious pur- 
pose, sustained plan, some amount of eiifort in the appUcation of 
p 209 



210 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

means to ends ; often secrecy and finesse are associated with 
Intrigue, but these are not essential. In The Merchant of Venice 
both Lorenzo and Bassanio are seen wooing. Lorenzo's wooing 
of Jessica is, dramatically, an intrigue : effort and contrivance are 
necessary to carry off the Jewess without her father's consent. 
But Bassanio's wooing does not make an intrigue, for, upon the face 
of things, the issue does not depend upon Bassanio's will or effort, 
but upon fate or chance ; the dramatic interest of the Caskets 
Story must be referred to some other head — it is a problem and 
its solution. 

We may go farther. As soon as individual will translates itself 
into action, it is sure to come into conflict with other individual 
wills. This leads us to another among the prominent forms of 
dramatic interest — Irony. Etymologically, this is a Greek word 
for saying, more particularly, sayifig as distinct from meaning: 
hence its suggestion is a doubleness of significance, at first in 
words, subsequently in situations or events. The word had great 
vogue in Greek tragedy, which dramatised stories perfectly fa- 
miliar to the audience as the sacred myths of their gods ; hence 
the spectator in the Greek theatre knew all through the movement 
what the end of the story must be, and from time to time words 
spoken in the scenes would have an ' irony,' from the spectator's 
knowledge of the sequel clashing with the unconsciousness of this 
sequel on the part of the personages in the story. Thus CEdipus 
is heard vowing to move heaven and earth for the discovery of the 
man indicated by the oracle as having polluted the city, and 
the audience feel a thrill of irony, for they know the polluter will 
be discovered to be CEdipus himself, though at that point of the 
story he knows it not. Coming down from Greek to modern 
drama, the term ' irony ' enlarges to include in a general sense the 
shocks and clashes between one aspect and another of some 
double situation, the whole grasped by the spectator, only part 
known to some at least of the personages in the scene. Thus 
irony is closely associated with dramatic intrigue ; it obtains 
where intrigue clashes with intrigue, or the course of an intrigue 



DRAMATIC INTRIGUE AND IRONY 211 

clashes with some external circumstance, or something in the 
character of the persons concerned. In the play of Measure for 
Measure we have the intrigue of Angelo to use secretly his power 
over her brother's life as a means of forcing Isabella to his will \ 
we have again the secret intrigue of the disguised Duke to substi- 
tute Mariana for Isabella ; yet again we are aware of the circum- 
stance that Mariana had been the betrothed bride of Angelo 
disgracefully cast off: these three things clash together in the 
spectator's mind as the dramatic interest of irony, when he sees 
a man unconsciously redeem a former sin in the very act (as he 
supposes) of committing a new crime. Again, there is another 
secret intrigue of Angelo to hurry the execution of Claudio when 
(as he supposes) he has gained the prize for which he promised 
pardon ; this is met by a counter intrigue of the Duke to substi- 
tute for Claudio another victim.^ The irony latent in this clash 
of intrigues comes to the surface in the final scene, when the 
exposed Angelo, after having been saved from his first danger, 
and appearing as the husband of Mariana, is sentenced to death 
for the foul treachery to Claudio ; ^ Mariana, up to this point in 
league with the Duke, is now plunged in tragic dismay, and with 
Isabella pleads passionately for the Hfe of the husband that 
moment granted her : all the while that the Duke is prolonging 
this strained situation the spectator of the drama has the clue in 
his possession that will make all straight. In the same play there 
is a dramatic intrigue in the Duke's hovering, disguised as a 
Friar, about the scenes from which he is supposed to be at 
a distance ; this intrigue comes in contact with the personahty of 
Lucio,^ and the spectator catches a shock of irony as Lucio 
confides to the Friar his low opinion of the Duke ; the spectator 
catches another shock of irony as the disguised Duke leads on 
Lucio to confess to him misdemeanours of his own which will be 
used presently when the Duke resumes his seat of judgment. It 
is obvious enough that intrigue and irony naturally go together in 

1 Measure for Measure IV. ii, from 95. ^ V. i, from 405. 

8III. ii, from45: V. i. 



212 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

the moral system of a dramatic literature : as intrigue is specially 
consecrated to the dramatic expression of individual will, so irony 
has the function of conveying the clash of individual wills with one 
another or with circumstances. 

In connection with this part of our subject no play of Shake- 
speare is more brilliant than The Taming of the Shrew} It has 
a primary and a secondary plot : the first is occupied with the 
wooing of Katherine, the shrew ; the second with the wooing of 
her sister Bianca, a natural and winsome girl. Three suitors are 
seeking the hand of this Bianca ; their suits are made intrigues 
by the circumstance that her widower father, burdened with the 
task of finding husbands for his two children, has hit upon the 
ingenious plan of announcing to his world that he will receive 
no overture for Bianca until her shrewish elder sister is married ; 
this forces Bianca's lovers to use secrecy and contrivance. It 
might seem as if this secondary plot, with a triple intrigue and 
all its possibilities of irony, would overbalance the primary plot. 
But what this last lacks in quantity it makes up for in quality ; 
the wooing of Katherine is saturated through and through, not 
exactly with irony, but with a dramatic quality akin to irony — 
the interest of paradox. 

We naturally woo that which is attractive ; Petruchio para- 
doxically undertakes to win what is repellent. 

Gremio. But will you woo this wild-cat ? 

Petruchio. Will I live? . . . 

Why came I hither but to that intent ? 
Think you a little din can daunt mine ears ? 
Have I not in my time heard lions roar ? 
Have I not heard the sea pufF'd up with winds 
Rage like an angry boar chafed with sweat ? 
Have I not heard great ordnance in the field, 
And heaven's artillery thunder in the skies ? 
Have I not in a pitched battle heard 
Loud ' larums, neighing steeds, and trumpets' clang ? 

* Compare the scheme of the play in the Appendix below, page 344. 



DRAMATIC INTRIGUE AND IRONY 213 

And do you tell me of a woman's tongue, 
That gives not half so great a blow to hear 
As will a chestnut in a farmers fire ? 

The method of the wooing is even more paradoxical than the 
purpose to woo. Petruchio may be described as a social 
' hustler ' : he has all the hustler's accentuated egoism, and 
understands the force of mere social momentum. He sets him- 
self to reverse everything expected of the conventional wooer ; 
in the bewilderment that ensues he will sweep resistance off its 
feet by the resolute pace of his movements. While Katherine's 
shrewishness is the common talk of the city, Petruchio announces 
himself to the father as a suitor attracted by — 

Her affability and bashful modesty, 

Her wondrous qualities, and mild behaviour. 

The delighted Baptista must nevertheless adjourn the interview, 
as other guests are present, but the hustler cannot wait. 

Signior Baptista, my business asketh haste, 
And every day I cannot come to woo. 

Katherine is sent for ; in a parenthesis of soliloquy Petruchio 
unfolds his system of paradox. 

Say that she rail ; why then I'll tell her plain 

She sings as sweetly as a nightingale : 

Say that she frown ; I'll say she looks as clear 

As morning roses newly wash'd with dew ; 

Say she be mute and will not speak a word ; 

Then I'll commend her volubility, 

And say she uttereth piercing eloquence : 

If she do bid me pack, I'll give her thanks, 

As though she bid me stay by her a week ; 

If she deny to wed, I'll crave the day 

When I shall ask the banns, and when be married. 



214 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

A stormy scene ensues, but Petruchio will see nothing stormy. 

I find you passing gentle, 
'Twas told me you were rough and coy and sullen, 
And now I find report a very liar ; 
For thou art pleasant, gamesome, passing courteous, 
But slow in speech, yet sweet as spring-time flowers. 

The shrew lets off her rage against this wooer to the assembling 
company, but Petruchio is unmoved. 

Petru. If she be curst, it is for policy, 

For she's not froward, but modest as the dove . . . 

And to conclude, we have 'greed so well together, 

That upon Sunday is the wedding-day. 
Kath. ni see thee hang'd on Sunday first. 
Gremio. Hark, Petruchio ; she says shell see thee hang'd first. 
Tranio. Is this your speeding ? nay, then, good night our part ! 
Petru. Be patient, gentlemen ; I choose her for myself : 

If she and 1 be pleased, what's that to you ? 

'Tis bargain'd 'twixt us twain, being alone. 

That she shall still be curst in company. 

Whirled at this pace to a wedding-day, the shrew, with no dis- 
tinct plan of resistance, can only find a fresh grievance in her 
proposed bridegroom keeping her waiting : after a while this is 
lost in a tour-de-force of paradox. 

Petruchio is coming in a new hat and an old jerkin, a pair 
of old breeches thrice turned, a pair of boots that have been 
candle-cases, one buckled, another laced, an old rusty sword 
ta'en out of the town-armoury, with a broken hilt, and chape- 
less ; with two broken points ; his horse hipped with an old 
mothy saddle and stirrups of no kindred ; besides, possessed 
with the glanders and like to mose in the chine ; troubled with 
the lampass, infected with the fashions, full of windgalls, sped 
with spavins, rayed with the yellows, past cure of the fives, 
stark spoiled with the staggers, begnawn with the bots, 
swayed in the back and shoulder-shotten ; near-legged before 
and with a half-checked bii and a head-stall of sheep's leather 



DRAMATIC INTRIGUE AND IRONY 21$ 

which, being restrained to keep him from stumbling, hath 
been often burst and now repaired with knots ; one girth six 
times pieced and a woman^s crupper of velure, which hath 
two letters for her name fairly set down in studs, and here and 
there pieced with pack-thread. 

Even the anxious father has to remonstrate, but Petruchio will 
not explain. 

To me she's married, not unto my clothes. 

How the momentum of Petruchio's wildness gets the parties into 
the church we can only conjecture, for that part of the story 
goes on behind the scenes ; but the proceedings in the church 
are related by Gremio : how the mad bridegroom swears his 
' ay ' so loud that the priest drops the book, and is cuffed as he 
picks it up again ; how he ends by drinking a health, and throws 
the sops in the sexton's face. Katherine at last wakes up her 
resistance when the newly wedded man will go away on unex- 
plained business before the wedding feast ; Petruchio sweeps 
away the resisting bride as in a fervour of delivering gallantry. 



Draw forth thy weapon, we are beset with thieves ; 
Rescue thy mistress, if thou be a man. 
Fear not, sweet wench, they shall not touch thee, Kate ; 
ril buckler thee against a million. 

The paradoxical taming is continued at home. 

Katherine. I, who never knew how to entreat, 

Nor never needed that I should entreat, 
Am starved for meat, giddy for lack of sleep ; 
With oaths kept waking, and with brawling fed ; 
And that which spites me more than all these wants. 
He does it under name of perfect love ; 
As who should say, if I should sleep or eat, 
'Twere deadly sickness or else present death.^ 

1 Taming of Shrew IV. iii. 8. 



2l6 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

The paradoxical conclusion of this primary plot is that the tamed 
shrew reads to the mild Bianca and other normal wives a long 
lecture on wifely submissiveness. 

What the interest of paradox is to the primary, the interest of 
irony is to the secondary plot. As we have seen, three lovers 
make conflicting suits for the hand of the pretty Bianca : Hor- 
tensio is a neighbour : Gremio has the common combination of 
age with wealth ; Lucentio is a newcomer to Padua, and with 
him it is a case of love at first sight.^ All three lovers have to 
make their approach indirectly. Hortensio, in return for intro- 
ducing his friend Petruchio as a suitor for Katherine, arranges 
that his friend shall introduce himself disguised as a teacher of 
music for Bianca. Gremio on his part will have an agent for 
his interests among Bianca's teachers. But Lucentio, in scholar's 
disguise, applies for this agency : already we get our first flash 
of irony as Gremio unconsciously introduces into the circle of 
Bianca's instructors his dangerous rival. As the story pro- 
gresses, a situation of prolonged irony appears : the disguised 
rivals have to carry on their wooing in the presence of one 
another.^ The fair pupil has some trouble to keep the peace 
between her masters ; she sets the musician to getting his diffi- 
cult instrument in order, while the teacher of poetry has his 
chance. 

Lucentio, ' Hie ibat Simois ; hie est Sigeia tellus ; 
Hie steterat Priami regia celsa senis.' 

*Hic ibat,' as I told you before, — 'Simois,' I am Lucentio, 
— ' hie est,' son unto Vincentio of Pisa, — ' Sigeia tellus,' dis- 
guised thus to get your love ; — ' Hie steterat,' and that Lu- 
centio that comes a-wooing, — ' Priami,' is my man Tranio, — 
* regia,' bearing my port, — * celsa senis,' that we might beguile 
the old pantaloon. 

Bianca tries if she has learned her lesson. 

"^Taming of Shrew I. i. 152, and whole scene. 2 m, j. 



DRAMATIC INTRIGUE AND IRONY 2i; 

* Hie ibat Simois,' I know you not, — ' hie est Sigeia tellus/ 
I trust you not, — ' Hie steterat Priami,' take heed he hear us 
not, — ' regia,' presume not, — ' celsa senis ' despair not. 

The music-teacher in his turn begs Bianca to read a new gamut, 
newer than anything taught in his trade before — the gamut of 
Hortensio. 

Bianca {reads) " * Gamut ' I am, the ground of all accord, 
'' A re,' to plead Hortensio's passion ; 

* B mi,' Bianca, take him for thy lord, 

* C fa ut,' that loves with all affection : 

* D sol re,' one clef, two notes have I : 

* E la mi,' show pity, or I die." 
Call you this gamut? tut, I like it not : 

Old fashions please me best ; I am not so nice, 
To change true rules for old inventions. 

But the finesse of intrigue in the secondary plot goes far beyond 
this. Lucentio has come to Padua with a certain amount of 
state ; he has servants, and a family name to support. One of 
his servants is Tranio, in whom we recognise a modernisation 
of a type familiar to Roman Comedy, the scheming slave or 
professional sharper. When, therefore, Lucentio assumes his 
disguise, he makes this Tranio take his master's name and 
position ; more than this, the pseud o-Lucentio is to go in state to 
Baptista's house, and be in name one more suitor for the hand 
of Bianca ; he will thus be always at hand to second his master's 
secret play.^ Tranio acts the gentleman to perfection, and 
makes a social impression for the name of 'Lucentio.'^ Thus 
the real Lucentio carries on a double campaign, wooing the lady 
in his own (disguised) person, and through his servant heading 
off his rivals. Two more strokes of irony are due to the 
machinations of Tranio, soi-disant Lucentio. When one of the 
rivals, Hortensio, is getting discouraged — since the teacher of 
poetry steadily gains upon the teacher of music — the supposed 

1 1, i, from 203. 2 II. i, from 87 ; I. ii, from 219. 



2l8 



THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 



Lucentio with easy magnanimity moves Hortensio to mutual 
renunciation of their claims.-^ 

Hortensio. Quick proceeders, marry! Now, tell me, I pray, 
You that durst swear that your mistress Bianca 
Loved none in the world so well as Lucentio. 

Tranio. O despiteful love! unconstant womankind! 
I tell thee, Licio, this is wonderful. 

Hortensio. Mistake no more : I am not Licio, 
Nor a musician, as I seem to be ; 
But one that scorn to live in this disguise. . . • 
Know, sir, that I am calPd Hortensio. 

Tranio. Signior Hortensio, I have often heard 
Of your entire affection to Bianca ; 
And since mine eyes are witness of her lightness, 
I will with you, if you be so contented. 
Forswear Bianca and her love for ever. 

Hortensio. See, how they kiss and court! Signior Lucentio, 
Here is my hand, and here I firmly vow 
Never to woo her more, but do forswear her. 
As one unworthy all the former favours 
That I have fondly flatter'd her withal. 

Tranio. And here I take the like unfeigned oath, 

Never to marry with her though she would entreat. 

Not less ironical is the situation when the assumed Lucentio 
makes his play against the other rival.^ Gremio has no attrac- 
tions of youth ; his time comes when the question is of settle- 
ments. But even Gremio's wealth is made to look small by one 
who can draw upon the bank of imagination. 

Baptista. Say, Signior Gremio, what can you assure her? 
Gremio. First, as you know, my house within the city 

Is richly furnished with plate and gold ; 

Basins and ewers to lave her dainty hands ; 

My hangings all of Tyrian tapestry ; 

In ivory coffers I have stuff 'd my crowns ; 



1 IV. u. 



* II. i, from 343. 



DRAMATIC INTRIGUE AND IRONY 



219 



In cypress chests my arras counterpoints, 
Costly apparel, tents, and canopies. 
Fine linen, Turkey cushions boss'd with pearl, 
Valance of Venice gold in needlework. 
Pewter and brass and all things that belong 
To house or housekeeping : then, at my farm 
I have a hundred milch-kine to the pail, 
Sixscore fat oxen standing in my stalls. 
And all things answerable to this portion. 
Myself am struck in years, I must confess ; 
And if I die to-morrow, this is hers, 
If whilst I live she will be only mine. 

Tranio. That ' only ' came well in. Sir, list to me : 
I am my father's heir and only son : 
If I may have your daughter to my wife, 
I'll leave her houses three or four as good, 
Within rich Pisa walls, as any one 
Old Signior Gremio has in Padua ; 
Besides two thousand ducats by the year 
Of fruitful land, all which shall be her jointure. 
What, have I pinch'd you, Signior Gremio ? 

Gremio. Two thousand ducats by the year of land! 
My land amounts not to so much in all ; 
That she shall have ; besides an argosy 
That now is lying in Marseilles' road. 
What, have I choked you with an argosy? 

Tranio. Gremio, 'tis known my father hath no less 

Than three great argosies ; besides two galliases. 
And twelve tight galleys : these I will assure her. 
And twice as much, whate'er thou offer'st next. 

Gremio. Nay, I have offer'd all, I have no more ; 

And she can have no more than all I have. 



Four fine situations of irony have thus sprung from the clash 
of intrigues in the secondary plot. A fifth is added as at last 
the secondary plot is made to clash with the primary. Tranio, 
playing the role of his master, has had it all his own way so far ; 
but he is now, naturally enough, called upon to make good his 



220 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

promises by a pledge from Lucentio's father.^ Without a blush 
he undertakes this. 

'Tis in my head to do my master good ; 

I see no reason, but supposed Lucentio 

Must get a father, call'd ' supposed Vincentio ' ; 

And that's a wonder : fathers commonly 

Do get their children ; but in this case of wooing, 

A child shall get a sire, if I fail not of my cunning. 

The plan is a simple one : the strangers entering the city are 
scanned, until a suitable figure is found in a certain Pedant.^ 

Tranio. What countryman, I pray? 

Pedant. Of Mantua. 

Tranio. Of Mantua, sir ? marry, God forbid ! 

And come to Padua, careless of your life? 

Pedant. My life, sir! how, I pray? for that goes hard. 

Tranio. 'Tis death for any one in Mantua 

To come to Padua. Know you not the cause? 
Your ships are stay'd at Venice, and the duke, 
For private quarrel 'twixt your duke and him, 
Hath published and proclaimed it openly : 
'Tis marvel, but that you are but newly come, 
You might have heard it else proclaimed about. 

Pedant. Alas, sir, it is worse for me than so! 

For I have bills for money by exchange 
From Florence and must here deliver them. 

Tranio obligingly proposes that the stranger shall assume the 
personality of one Sir Vincentio of Pisa, shortly expected to 
arrange a matter of dowry for his son on his marriage to Signior 
Baptista's daughter ; the Pedant is only too glad to save his 
life on these easy terms. So far the intrigue of Tranio is 
triumphant ; but meanwhile the train of events which makes 
the primary plot of the play is preparing for it a collision. 
Petruchio and his Katherine journeying to Padua fall in by the 

1 II. i, from 389. 2 IV. ii, from 59. 



DRAMATIC INTRIGUE AND IRONY 221 

way with a reverend senior travelling in the same direction ; * 
when the name of Vincentio of Pisa is mentioned, Petruchio 
hails him as a prospective marriage connection, and escorts him 
to the house where his son will be found to have made a wealthy 
and influential match. As they knock at the door ^ the real and 
the assumed Vincentio clash. 

Pedant {looking out at the window). What's he that 
knocks as he would beat down the gate? 

Vincentio. Is Signior Lucentio within, sir? 

Pedant. He's within, sir, but not to be spoken withal. 

Vincentio. What if a man bring him a hundred pound or 
two, to make merry withal. 

Pedant. Keep your hundred pounds to yourself: he shall 
need none, so long as I live. 

Petruchio. Nay, I told you your son was well beloved in 
Padua. Do you hear, sir? To leave frivolous circumstances, 
I pray you, tell Signior Lucentio, that his father is come from 
Pisa, and is here at the door to speak with him. 

Pedant. Thou liest : his father is come from Padua, and 
here looking out at the window. 

Vincentio. Art thou his father? 

Pedant. Ay, sir ; so his mother says, if I may believe her. 

Petruchio {to Vincentio). Why, how now, gentleman ! why, 
this is flat knavery, to take upon you another man's name. 

Pedant. Lay hands on the villain: I believe a' means to 
cozen somebody in this city under my countenance. 

The ironical situation is prolonged as Lucentio's servants come 
on the scene, and hasten to take part against their master's own 
father ; stormy passages ensue, until Lucentio comes in person, but 
comes with his bride on his arm fresh from the church. There is 
explanation and confession : but the essential of the marriage has 
been secured, and the irate father can only make the best of the 
circumstances : irony gives place to the usual happy ending. 
For Shakespeare's treatment of intrigue and irony it seems 

1 IV. V, from 26. 2v.i. 



222 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

natural to mention first this play of The Taming of the Shrew ; 
no other drama is richer in ironic situations, while the personal 
will, of which intrigue is the embodiment, seems to find its climax 
in a sustained paradox. Hardly less remarkable is The Two 
Gentlemen of Verona : here the successive advances in intrigue 
and irony seem to be made with all the regularity of a game of 
chess.^ 

The opening situation is complex, yet without conflict. We 
have three independent interests to keep before our minds : there 
is the romantic friendship between Proteus and Valentine, the two 
gentlemen of Verona ; there is the love of one of them, Proteus, for 
Julia \ again, over in Milan, there is what, to distinguish it from 
love, we may call a piece of social matchmaking — the suit of 
Sir Thurio for the hand of Silvia, the Duke's daughter, favoured by 
her father, resisted by herself. The movement of the play com- 
mences with Valentine setting off on his travels ; he comes to 
Milan, and entertains for Silvia a passion which is fully recipro- 
cated. This love of Valentine and Silvia becomes an intrigue, 
since it must be kept from the knowledge of the father and the 
accepted suitor. The irony latent in such a situation becomes 
apparent in a later scene,^ at a time when Valentine's secret has 
been betrayed to the Duke. The lover, conscious to himself of 
a rope-ladder under his cloak with which he is to scale Silvia's 
window, is detained by the Duke with a long confidential ex- 
planation of his purpose — from disgust with his daughter's 
perverseness — to marry again. 

Val. What would your Grace have me to do in this ? 
Duke. There is a lady in Verona here 

Whom I aifect ; but she is nice and coy 

And nought esteems my aged eloquence : 

Now therefore would I have thee to my tutor— 

For long agone I have forgot to court ; 

1 Compare the scheme of the play in the Appendix below, page 341. 

2 Two Gentlemen of Verona III. i, from 51. 



DRAMATIC INTRIGUE AND IRONY 223 

Besides, the fashion of the time is changed — 
How and which way I may bestow myself 
To be regarded in her sun-bright eye. 

Valentine gives the Duke good advice; but it appears that the 
lady is jealously kept all day from the approach of wooers. 

Val. Why, then, I would resort to her by night. 
Duke. Ay, but the doors be lock'd and keys kept safe, 

That no man hath recourse to her by night. 
Val. What lets but one may enter at her window? 
Duke. Her chamber is aloft, far from the ground, 

And built so shelving that one cannot climb it 

Without apparent hazard of his life. 
Val. Why then, a ladder quaintly made of cords. 

To cast up, with a pair of anchoring hooks. 

Would serve to scale another Hero's tower, 

So bold Leander would adventure it. 
Duke. Now, as thou art a gentleman of blood. 

Advise me where I may have such a ladder. 
Val. When would you use it ? pray, sir, tell me that. 
Duke. This very night ; for Love is like a child. 

That longs for every thing that he can come by. 
Val. By seven o'clock Til get you such a ladder. 
Duke. But, hark thee ; I will go to her alone : 

How shall I best convey the ladder thither? 
Val. It will be light, my lord, that you may bear it 

Under a cloak that is of any length. 
Duke. A cloak as long as thine will serve the turn ? 
Val. Ay, my good lord. 
Duke. Then let me see thy cloak : 

I'll get me one of such another length. 
Val. Why, any cloak will serve the turn, my lord. 
Duke. How shall I fashion me to wear a cloak ? 

I pray thee, let me feel thy cloak upon me. 

What letter is this same ? What's here ? ' To Silvia' ! 

And here an engine fit for my proceeding. 

Meanwhile the action of the play has made a second advance 
when Proteus, unexpectedly, has also been sent by his father to 



224 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

travel. Proteus has arrived at Milan, and instantly fallen in love 
with Silvia. Such love makes a triple intrigue : it is an intrigue 
in love, for Proteus is thus false to his Julia ; it is an intrigue in 
friendship, Proteus betraying his friend's secret to the Duke in 
order to get Valentine out of the way ; yet again, it is an intrigue 
in social life and matchmaking, since the only way of getting 
access to Silvia is for Proteus to pretend to woo on behalf of 
Sir Thurio. 

Proteus. Already have I been false to Valentine, 
And now I must be as unjust to Thurio. 
Under the colour of commending him, 
I have access my own love to prefer : 
But Silvia is too fair, too true, too holy, 
To be corrupted with my worthless gifts. 
When I protest true loyalty to her, 
She twits me with my falsehood to my friend ; 
When to her beauty I commend my vows. 
She bids me think how I have been forsworn 
In breaking faith with Julia whom I loved. ^ 

The movement advances yet another stage : Julia, fearing 
herself forsaken by her absent lover, sets off to travel in dis- 
guise of a boy ; and at last, in Milan, engages herself as page to 
the unconscious Proteus. What before was triple intrigue now 
becomes triple irony. There is irony in love, as Julia is brought 
by a friendly landlord to hear her lover serenade another mis- 
tress.^ 

Host. How now ! are you sadder than you were before ? 
How do you, man ? the music likes you not. 

Julia. You mistake : the musician likes me not. 

Host. Why, my pretty youth ? 

Julia. He plays false, father. 

Host. How ? out of tune on the strings ? 

Julia. Not so; but yet so false that he grieves my very 
heart-strings. 

Host. You have a quick ear. 

1 IV. ii. 1. a IV. ii. from a6. 



DRAMATIC INTRIGUE AND IRONY 



225 



Julia. Ay, I would I were deaf ; it makes me have a slow 
heart. 

Host. I perceive you delight not in music. 

Julia. Not a whit, when it jars so. 

Host. Hark, what fine change is in the music! 

Julia. Ay, that change is the spite. 

Host. You would have them always play but one thing ? 

Julia. I would always have one play but one thing. 

But there is also irony in friendship : by one of Shakespeare's 
happiest touches, Proteus sends the page to Silvia for her 
picture ; as the indignant Silvia takes the part of the unknown 
Julia the real Julia is warming to her, and thus a secretly dawn- 
ing affection between their mistresses comes to supply the place 
of the secretly ruptured friendship between the two gentlemen 
of Verona.^ 



Silvia. 

Julia. 

Silvia. 



Julia. 
Silvia. 



Julia. 

Silvia. 

Julia. 

Silvia. 
Julia. 



Silvia. 



O, he sends you for a picture. 

Ay, madam. 

Ursula, bring my picture there. 

Go, give your master this : tell him from me, 

One Julia, that his changing thoughts forget, 

Would better fit his chamber than this shadow . , 

Madam, he sends your ladyship this ring. 

The more shame for him that he sends it me ; 

For I have heard him say a thousand times 

His Julia gave it him at his departure. 

Though his false finger have profaned the ring, 

Mine shall not do his Julia so much wrong. 

She thanks you. 

What say'st thou ? 

I thank you, madam, that you tender her. 

Poor gentlewoman ! my master wrongs her much. 

Dost thou know her? 

Almost as well as I do know myself : 

To think upon her woes I do protest 

That I have wept a hundred several times. 

Belike she thinks that Proteus hath forsook her. 



1 IV. iv, from 113. 



226 



THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 



Julia. I think she doth ; and that's her cause of sorrow. 

Silvia. Is she not passing fair? 

Julia. She hath been fairer, madam, than she is : 

When she did think my master loved her well, 

She, in my judgement, was as fair as you ; 

But since she did neglect her looking-glass, 

And threw her sun-expelling mask away, 

The air hath starved the roses in her cheeks, 

And pinch'd the lily-tincture of her face, 

That now she is become as black as I. 
Silvia. How tall was she ? 
Julia. About my stature : for, at Pentecost, 

When all our pageants of delight were play'd, 

Our youth got me to play the woman's part. 

And I was trimm'd in Madam Julia's gown ; 

Which served me as fit, by all men's judgements. 

As if the garment had been made for me : 

Therefore I know she is about my height. 

And at that time I made her weep agood, 

For I did play a lamentable part : 

Madam, 'twas Ariadne passioning 

For Theseus' perjury and unjust flight ; 

Which I so lively acted with my tears 

That my poor mistress, moved therewithal, 

Wept bitterly ; and would I might be dead 

If I in thought felt not her very sorrow ! 
Silvia. She is beholding to thee, gentle youth. 

Alas, poor lady, desolate and left! 

I weep myself to think upon thy vi^ords. 

Here, youth, there is my purse: I give thee this 

For thy sweet mistress' sake, because thou lovest her. 

Farewell. \Exit. 
Julia. And she shall thank you for't, if e'er you know her. 

To such irony in love and friendship is added, for completeness, 
irony in the matter of the matchmaker's intrigue, v^^hen Proteus 
reports progress to Sir Thurio, for whom he is supposed to be 
wooing, and the asides of the page accentuate the ironic situation.^ 

1 V. ii. 



DRAMATIC INTRIGUE AND IRONY 227 

Thurio. Sir Proteus, what says Silvia to my suit? 

Proteus. O, sir, I find her milder than she was ; 

And yet she takes exceptions at your person. 

Thurio. What, that my leg is too long ? 

Proteus. No ; that it is too little. 

Thurio. I'll wear a boot, to make it somewhat rounder. 

Julia. {Aside) But love will not be spurr'd to what it loathes. 

Thurio. What says she to my face ? 

Proteus. She says it is a fair one. 

Thurio. Nay then, the wanton lies ; my face is black. 

Protetis. But pearls are fair ; and the old saying is. 

Black men are pearls in beauteous ladies' eyes. 

Julia. {Aside) 'Tis true ; such pearls as put out ladies' eyes ; 

For I had rather wink than look on them. 

Thurio. How likes she my discourse? 

Protetts. Ill, when you talk of war. 

Thurio. But well, when I discourse of love and peace? 

Julia. {Aside) But better, indeed, when you hold your peace. 

Thurio. What says she to my valour? 

Proteus. O, sir, she makes no doubt of that. 

Julia. {Aside) She needs not, when she knows it cowardice. 

Thurio. What says she to my birth ? 

Proteus. That you are well derived. 

Julia. {Aside) True ; from a gentleman to a fool. 

Already we have a triple intrigue with its triple irony ; it only 
needs that a further advance of the movement shall bring the 
threads of the plot to a common meeting point. This is secured 
by the agency of a band of Outlaws infesting Italian roads ; ^ first 
Valentine, going into banishment, is captured by them and be- 
comes their captain ; then all the other personages of the plot 
in succession fall into the hands of the Outlaws and the power 
of Valentine. The prolonged irony of the plot thus intensifies 
to such shocks of clashing as will rapidly produce new com- 
binations. First, we have Proteus forcing his love upon the 
indignant Silvia in the hearing of Valentine himself : the injured 

1 IV. i ; compare V. ill, iv. 



228 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

friend discovers himself, and Proteus 's guilty intrigue is shat- 
tered at a blow. But in the rebound from this we have another 
shock : in his fulness of forgiveness Valentine speaks of bestow- 
ing his Silvia on Proteus, when a cry from the swooning page 
discovers Julia. The captured Duke and Thurio cease to pre- 
sent further obstacles. All dissolves into a final situation of 
equilibrium, triple like the opening situation, but with a happy 
change of persons : we end with the restored friendship of 
Valentine and Proteus, the restored love of Proteus and Julia, 
and the new love of Valentine and Silvia triumphant over all 
the crosses of fortune. 

The two plays of The Merry Wives of Windsor and Twelfth 
Night have been mentioned in a previous chapter as examples 
of plot resting mainly upon the clash of intrigues. Such plays 
naturally will be full of irony. Two illustrations are especially 
striking. The jealous Ford, warned of Falstaff's designs against 
his wife, forms a deep intrigue of his own : in disguise he seeks 
the knight, and makes a pretext for urging him on in his wicked 
purpose ; Ford's idea, of course, being to keep in touch with 
Falstaff 's intrigue until he can choose his own moment for ex- 
posing it. But to the dramatic spectator the irony is exquisite : 
a gallant forming a design against a wife is being paid money by 
the husband for acting upon it; again. Ford, laying a deep 
scheme for finding out whether his wife may not be in some 
slight degree assailable, is forced under his disguise to listen 
patiently to a circumstantial account of how this wife has been 
already assailed, and further to know that he himseK was 
present on the occasion and blindly let the assailant escape. 
From Twelfth Night comes the prettiest of all ironic situations. 
The disguised Viola loves the Duke, and naturally would throw 
obstacles in the way of the love embassies to Olivia. So the 
supposed page reads lectures to his master on love. 

Viola. Say that some lady, as perhaps there is, 

Hath for your love as great a pang of heart 



DRAMATIC INTRIGUE AND IRONY 229 

As you have for Olivia : you cannot love her ; 
You tell her so ; must she not then be answerM ? 

The Duke with much rhetoric protests that no woman's heart 
is big enough to hold love like his own. 

Viola. Ay, but I know, — 

Duke. What dost thou know? 

Viola. Too well what love women to men may owe : 

In faith, they are as true of heart as we. 

My father had a daughter loved a man. 

As it might be, perhaps, were I a woman, 

I should your lordship. 
Duke. And what's her history? 

Viola. A blank, my lord. She never told her love. 

But let concealment, like a worm i' the bud, 

Feed on her damask cheek : she pined in thought ; 

And with a green and yellow melancholy 

She sat like patience on a monument. 

Smiling at grief. Was not this love indeed? . . . 
Duke. But died thy sister of her love, my boy? 
Viola. I am all the daughters of my father's house. 

And all the brothers, too : and yet, I know not. 

A Midsummer-Night ^s Dream ^ goes beyond even Twelfth Night 
in intricacy of ironic situations. It well may; for in the Midsum- 
mer-Nighfs Dream supernatural machinery is available, and 
fairy enchantment goes to swell the natural crossing of cir- 
cumstance. We hear how Cupid's fiery shaft, aimed in vain 
at a maiden queen, fell upon a little western flower which is 
called love-in-idleness : ^ 

The juice of it on sleeping eye-lids laid 
Will make or man or woman madly dote 
Upon the next live creature that it sees. 

1 Compare the scheme of the play in the Appendix below, page 34a. 
^Midsummer-Night's Dream II. i. 155-187, 



230 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

But for this sweet poison there is an antidote ; Dian's bud 
prevails over Cupid's flower, if it be crushed into the eye of the 
deluded lover : ^ 

Whose liquor hath this virtuous property, 
To take from thence all error with his might, 
And make his eyeballs roll with wonted sight. 

With motive agencies of this kind to draw upon, we are pre- 
pared for a plot that will exhibit an ever increasing crescendo 
of entanglement. 

The original situation — lying outside the play — was simple : 
two pairs of mutual loves, Lysander and Hermia, Demetrius 
and Helena. When the parties first appear before us in the 
play,^ some unknown accident or personal whim has produced a 
situation of perversity ; for Demetrius has transferred his love 
to Hermia, two men loving the same woman, while Helena is 
forsaken, yet still loves. This situation is converted into a 
triple intrigue by the circumstance that Hermia 's father favours 



DEMETRIUS 



the suit of Demetrius, and invokes the authority of the Duke. 
Accordingly we have, first, the lovers Lysander and Hermia 
stealing away by night out of Athens ; then Helena, admitted 
to their confidence, betraying their flight to Demetrius;^ then 
again, as Demetrius pursues the lovers, Helena herself pursuing 
Demetrius.^ In this entanglement of perverse intrigue all enter 
the enchanted wood. Now the King of Fairies interferes: 

1 III. ii. 366 ; IV. i. 78. 8 I. i. 246. 

2 I. i, from 21. * II. ii, from 84. 



DRAMATIC INTRIGUE AND IRONY 



231 



hearing the lamentations of Helena and the scorn of Demetrius, 
he sends Puck to exercise the virtue of Cupid's flower upon 
* an Athenian ' whom he will find in the wood ; Puck mistakes 




his man, and anoints the eyes of Lysander, who, when he 
awakes, is enchanted into adoration of Helena.^ We have thus 
— not, as in Twelfth Night, a. triangular duel of fancy — but 
what may be called a quadrangular duel of perverse affection : 
Lysander in love with Helena, Helena with Demetrius, Deme- 
trius with Hermia, Hermia with Lysander. The mistake being 
discovered, Oberon himself takes charge of the remedy:^ he 
applies the juice to Demetrius's eyes, while Puck is sent to 
bring Helena to the side of Demetrius when he shall awake. 
The charm takes effect, but the complication is greater than 
ever: once more we have two men wooing one woman, with 




another woman forsaken ; but Helena, the doubly-wooed, takes 
it all for mockery of her forsaken condition ; at last she turns 
upon Hermia, and squabbles between the girls are added to 
crossings of the lovers. ^ 



1 II. ii. 70, 103. 2 ni. ii, from 88. 

8 From III. ii. 192 to 447 this acutest phase of the entanglement prevails: 
dotted lines in the figure suggest the breaking up of amisable relations between 
the two girls, and again between the two men. 



232 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

Helena. Lo, she is one of this confederacy ! 

Now I perceive they have conjoin'd all three 

To fashion this false sport, in spite of me. 

Injurious Hermia ! most ungrateful maid ! 

Have you conspired, have you with these contrived 

To bait me with this foul derision? 

Is all the counsel that we two have shared, 

The sisters' vows, the hours that we have spent, 

When we have chid the hasty-footed time 

For parting us, — O, is it all forgot ? 

All school-days' friendship, childhood innocence? 

This is only the mild beginning : in time they come near to 
personal violence. 

Helena. I pray you, though you mock me, gentlemen, 

Let her not hurt me : I was never curst ; . . . 

O, when she's angry, she is keen and shrewd! 

She was a vixen when she went to school ; 

And though she be but little, she is fierce. 
Hermia. ' Little ' again ! nothing but ' low ' and ' little '! 

Why will you suffer her to flout me thus ? 

Let me come to her. 

Meanwhile the combative spirit has spread to the men : 

Demetrms. If she cannot entreat, I can compel. 

Lysander. Thou can'st compel no more than she entreat. . . . 

Demetrius. I say I love thee more than he can do. 

Lysa7ider. If thou say so, withdraw, and prove it too. 

At last v^^e have the vixenish Hermia chasing the longer-legged 
Helena, the two lovers with drawn swords chasing one another 
through the dusky wood ; Puck, with mist and mimicking voice, 
rejoicing to emphasise the confusion. When all lie down from 
sheer weariness, unconscious of the vicinity of the others, the 
time has come for applying the antidote. It only needs to 
squeeze Dian's bud into the eyes of Lysander,^ and the whole 

1 III. ii. 450. 



DRAMATIC INTRIGUE AND IRONY 233 

tangle of ironic perversity resolves into the final happy situa- 
tion : two pairs of loyal lovers, the sundered friendship of 
the schoolmates and the sundered good-fellowship of the 
young men entirely restored. As the four awake and leave the 




enchanted wood, they can hardly persuade themselves that 
the distracting events of the night have been anything more 
than a midsummer-night's dream/ 

Two more of Shakespeare's comedies are noteworthy for the 
treatment of intrigue and irony. The main plot of Much Ado 
About Nothing'^ rests upon an intrigue of the blackest villany. 
Don John, rebel against his brother the Prince, has been con- 
quered, and brought home in sullen subjection : he is on the 
watch for mischief. He and his followers concert a deep 
scheme against a favourite of the Prince : it is that some one 
should personate Hero, and exhibit her in an equivocal situation 
before the Prince and his friend, the very night before she is to 
become this Claudio's bride. But conspiracy is for ever at the 
mercy of accident ; irony and accident combine when the dra- 
matic providence of the play contrives the slightest of accidents 
as sufficient for the purpose. It is found in the Night Watch — 
stupidest of all Night Watches, a company of louts officered by 
a pair of asses ; these have not had time to compose themselves 
to sleep through their watch before they happen to overhear 
a conversation of Don John's men, and the conspiracy is be- 
trayed before it has reached its completion. It is however just 

1 IV. i. 136-196. 

a Compare the scheme of the play in the Appendix below, page 346. 



234 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

here that the strongest irony comes in. The officers of the 
watch, Dogberry and Verges, big with self-importance, bring 
their discovery to the governor.^ 

Leonato. What would you with me, honest neighbour ? 

Dogberry. Marry, sir, I would have some confidence with 
you that decerns you nearly. 

Leonato. Brief, I pray you ; for you see it is a busy time 
with me. 

Dogberry. Marry, this it is, sir. 

Verges. Yes, in truth it is, sir. 

Leonato. What is it, my good friends ? 

Dogberry. Goodman Verges, sir, speaks a little off the 
matter : an old man, sir, and his wits are not so blunt as, God 
help, I would desire they were; but, in faith, honest as the 
skin between his brows. 

Verges. Yes, I thank God I am as honest as any man 
living that is an old man and no honester than I. 

Dogberry. Comparisons are odorous : palabras, neighbour 
Verges. 

Leonato. Neighbours, you are tedious. 

Dogberry. It pleases your worship to say so, but we are 
the poor duke's officers; but truly, for mine own part, if I 
were as tedious as a king, I could find it in my heart to be- 
stow it all of your worship. 

Leonato. All thy tediousness on me, ah ? 

Dogberry. Yea, an 'twere a thousand pound more than 
'tis ; for I hear as good exclamation on your worship as of 
any man in the city ; and though I be but a poor man, I am 
glad to hear it. 

Verges. And so am I. 

Leonato. I would fain know what you have to say. 

Verges. Marry, sir, our watch to-night, excepting your 
worship's presence, ha' ta'en a couple of as arrant knaves as 
any in Messina. 

Dogberry. A good old man, sir; he will be talking: as 
they say, when the age is in, the wit is out : God help us ! 

1 Much Ado III. V. 



DRAMATIC INTRIGUE AND IRONY 235 

it is a world to see. Well said, i' faith, neighbour Verges : 
well, God's a good man ; an two men ride of a horse, one 
must ride behind. An honest soul, i' faith, sir; by my troth 
he is, as ever broke bread ; but God is to be worshipped ; all 
men are not alike ; alas, good neighbour. 

Leonato. Indeed, neighbour, he comes too short of you. 

Dogberry. Gifts that God gives. 

Leonato. I must leave you. 

Dogberry. One word, sir : our watch, sir, have indeed com- 
prehended two aspicious persons, and we would have them 
this morning examined before your worship. 

Leonato. Take their examination yourself and bring it me : 
I am now in great haste, as it may appear unto you. 

The dramatic spectator thus watches the important discovery in 
the act of being revealed, and revealed to the father of the 
threatened bride: but he sees, on the other hand, the fussy 
haste of Leonato, with a bridal ceremony on his hands, and the 
fussy self-importance of Dogberry and Verges, resolved to make 
the most of their accidental find, clash together, and delay the 
understanding of what has happened until it is too late, and 
the unhappy Hero has been shamed before the whole congrega- 
tion. The resolution of this entanglement is striking. Villa- 
nous intrigue has been met by accident ; has been reinstated by 
perverse folly : it is now met by what may be called the pious 
intrigue of the Friar. His sagacity has suspected some con- 
cealed wrong : he throws over Hero the veil of a reputed death, 
until bridegroom and Prince and father have learned the truth 
and been stricken with remorse. Claudio penitentially under- 
takes the strange recompense to the family honour, that he 
shall wed a veiled and unknown bride; the raised veil dis- 
plays Hero risen from the death of her slandered fame, and 
all ends happily. 

As the main plot of this play is interesting for its peculiar 
handling of intrigue and irony, so the underplot is a masterpiece 
of what we have already seen in another play — the paradoxical 
intrigue. Benedict and Beatrice have become types for the 



236 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

whole literary world of the commonest of social conventionalities, 
what Shakespeare calls "the merry war of the sexes." The 
underplot is an ingenious conspiracy of the other personages of 
the story to bring the man-quizzer and the woman-quizzer into 
love with one another. The vein of paradox is richly worked, 
and concludes in a paradoxical consummation. 

Benedick. A miracle \ here's our own hands against our 
hearts. Come, I will have thee ; but, by this light, I take thee 
for pity. 

Beatrice. I would not deny you ; but, by this good day, I 
yield upon great persuasion ; and partly to save your life, for 
I was told you were in a consumption. 

The other play to which I have made reference is the comedy 
of AlVs Well that Ends Well. We are not concerned with the 
difficult question of the play — the exact characters of Helena 
and Bertram. It is enough that the plot is made by a pair of 
cross intrigues.^ There is the intrigue of Helena to win Ber- 
tram ; successful so far that the King, grateful for his rescue 
from illness, has used his feudal authority to force unwilling 
Bertram to accept Helena as his wife. But though the ceremony 
of marriage is compulsory, its consummation depends upon Ber- 
tram's will : his intrigue is to escape the reality of the union to 
which he has been obliged to give nominal assent. Bertram 
sends the obedient wife to his ancestral home, making a pretext 
for a temporary separation which he means shall be eternal. 
Helena at last learns her husband's will in this enigmatic 
message : * 

When thou canst get the ring upon my finger which never 
shall come off, and show me a child begotten of thy body that 
I am father to, then call me husband : but in such a ' then ' 
I write a 'never.' 

1 Compare the scheme of the play in the Appendix below, p. 345. 
a AlVs Well III. ii. 59. 



DRAMATIC INTRIGUE AND IRONY 237 

This is of course the crux of the whole plot: the opposing 
intrigues have met in a central point. All that follows is a 
prolonged irony : Bertram, using deep finesse to point the 
impossibility of union with Helena, is all the while teaching 
Helena the exact means of winning him. As happens so often 
with enforced marriages, Bertram takes refuge in general dissi- 
pation ; in particular, he wooes a virtuous maiden of Florence. 
Helena has disappeared, as it seems never to return ; and in 
time is supposed to be dead. But she has followed in secret her 
husband's career, and at last concerts her plot with Diana of 
Florence, to take Diana's place, and turn an intended sin into a 
deed of restitution. 

Helena. Why then to-night 

Let us assay our plot ; which, if it speed, 
Is wicked meaning in a lawful deed 
And lawful meaning in a lawful act, 
Where both not sin, and yet a sinful fact.^ 

The irony that tinctures the whole situation breaks out finely at 
one point in the dialogue. The impassioned Bertram is wooing 
the Florentine maiden, when she suddenly seems to yield.^ 

Diana. Give me that ring. 

Bertram. I'll lend it thee, my dear; but have no power 

To give it from me. 
Diana. Will you not, my lord ? 

Bertram. It is an honour 'longing to our house, 

Bequeathed down from many ancestors ; 

Which were the greatest obloquy i' the world 

In me to lose. 
Diana. Mine honour's such a ring : 

My chastity's the jewel of our house, 

Bequeathed down from many ancestors ; 

Which were the greatest obloquy i' the world 

In me to lose : thus your own proper wisdom 

iIII.vii.fin. 21V. ii.39. 



238 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

Brings in the champion Honour on my part, 
Against your vain assault. 
Bertram. Here, take my ring : 

My house, mine honour, yea, my life, be thine, 
And ni be bid by thee. 

The plot goes forward to its completion. Bertram awakes from 
deepest disgrace to find a refuge in the restored Helena ; he has 
consummated a union in the act of deserting it, and by his own 
unconscious deed fulfilled the impossible condition his own 
bitter wit had devised. 

In this way intrigue, with its attendant irony, dominates the 
comedies of Shakespeare. But intrigue has a place in tragedy 
also, and here the irony may be of a different kind. The great 
study for this is the play of Othello} As motive centre of this 
play, we have lago, whose soul is shaped by intrigue ; infinitely 
crafty to plot, lago is also infinitely subtle to suspect ; until sus- 
picion goes beyond all natural bounds, and — like an eye 
strained by gazing at strong colours — lago sees nothing but his 
own dark passions even in the purity of Othello and Cassio.^ 
The opening situation of the drama is threefold. In Roderigo 
we have lust : the mere pursuit of a beauty which morally is on 
a plane out of his reach ; mere animal pursuit, in the spirit of 
the poet's scornful word — 

Man is the hunter ; woman is his game ; 
The sleek and comely creatures of the chase ; 
We hunt them for the beauty of their skins. 

Cassio is heart whole : even in his liaison with Bianca — which 
in the spirit of the age must be considered an innocent thing — 
he is tolerant, not amorous ; while he has been the trusted go- 
between in arranging the marriage of Desdemona with his chief. 
The third element in the opening situation is the mutual love of 
Othello and Desdemona; the natural affinity of soul which has 

1 Compare the scheme of the play in the Appendix below, p. 363. 

2 Othello: II. i. 304, 316. 



DRAMATIC INTRIGUE AND IRONY 239 

drawn together such opposites as the swarthy Moor and the deU- 
cate aristocratic beauty of Venice. Upon this threefold situation 
is brought to bear the brooding suspiciousness of lago, and we get 
a threefold intrigue. Against Roderigo it is the intrigue of the 
sharper and his dupe ; Roderigo is baited with specious hopes, 
while he turns his estate into costly jewels, which get no farther 
than the coffers of lago. As to Cassio, lago has a double plot : 
he seeks to oust him from an office he desires for himself; yet 
more, he seeks to get rid altogether of a man the daily beauty in 
whose life makes lago seem ugly.^ The third intrigue is against 
Othello : the soul of lago, sodden with jealous suspicion, has con- 
ceived the impossible idea that Othello has wronged him with his 
wife Emilia; 2 and lago resolves to make Othello in his turn feel 
what the pangs of jealousy mean. And here the treatment of 
intrigue is different from what we have seen in the other plays. 
Instead of these intrigues conflicting with one another, lago, by a 
few simple devices, is able to make them all cooperate in one 
single monster intrigue. By the simple suggestion to Roderigo 
that Desdemona is in love with Cassio the two first intrigues be- 
come one :» Roderigo, maddened at the idea, is easily persuaded, 
at the risk of some bodily suffering, to provoke a quarrel with 
Cassio when on military duty, and by the scandal that ensues 
Cassio loses his position; at the same time it is by employing 
Roderigo, and giving him a sense of doing something in the 
pursuit of Desdemona, that lago keeps his hold on Roderigo's 
purse. Later lago sets Roderigo on to attacking Cassio by night, 
lago himself being at hand to secure, as he hopes, the death of 
both.* Again, by choosing the name of Cassio as the name to 
suggest to Othello in connection with dark insinuations against 
the honour of Desdemona, lago makes the second and third 
intrigues into one ; by a sort of economy of villany it is brought 
about that all done towards racking Othello's heart with jealous 

1 V. i. 19. ' From II. i. 220. 

« I. iii, from 392 ; II. i, from 295. * IV. ii, from 173 ; V. i. 



240 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

misery is so much done towards bringing Cassio into danger, 
making him the victim of one who is as powerful to destroy as 
he is maddened with sense of injury. Not only have the four 
intrigues become one, but also the other threads making up the 
plot have been interwoven with them : Roderigo's mad pursuit of 
Desdemona has added impetus to the schemes of lago ; the force 
that linked Desdemona to Othello has become a sundering force 
when love has corrupted into jealousy ; even the affair of Cassio 
and Bianca^ is by accident made to lend a touch of impulse to the 
swelling current of suspicion. Thus all the trains of action move 
to a common culmination in a tragic climax. But an unexpected 
part of this tragic climax is the reaction of the intrigues upon the 
intriguer. It is here that irony begins to appear ; and it is a triple 
irony. The dark plotting of lago is at last betrayed to Othello — 
and by whom? It is lago's wife ^Emilia whose simplicity hits 
upon the truth that none of the rest have seen ; lago, vainly seek- 
ing to stop the revelation, when it has come out, in a moment's 
frenzy stabs his wife. Here is the first irony : when first lago 
conceived his groundless suspicions, he vowed he would be 
"evened with Othello, wife for wife";^ in a sense very different 
from what he meant his words have been fulfilled ; his devilish 
machinations have led Othello to slay Desdemona, and, in the 
rebound of this tragedy, lago has come to slay his own Emilia, 
and is thus " evened with Othello, wife for wife." The second 
irony has reference to Roderigo : lago had contrived his death 
to prevent his own betrayal ; and from the pocket of the slain 
Roderigo is taken the paper which makes the final Hnk in the 
chain of evidence against lago.^ Yet again, lago had plotted 
against Cassio's office and his life : Cassio just escapes with his 
life, succeeds Othello in the office of governor, and his first official 
act is to superintend the torturing of lago."* 

Here is the doublesidedness of situation and mockery in events 



1 III. iv, from i68 ; IV. i, from 151. 8 Compare V. i. 15, and V. ii. 308. 

211.1.308. ■*V.ii. 332-335. 



DRAMATIC INTRIGUE AND IRONY 24I 

which make irony ; but there is a difference from what has so far 
appeared. It is not so much the irony of circumstances as the 
irony of fate. In comedy, the irony depended upon the dramatic 
spectator who was, so to speak, in the confidence of the story, and 
held in his hands the two sides of the situation of which actors in 
the story saw only one side. But in this play, the suggestion is 
as if fate — or providence, or the general course of events — was 
itself the spectator, holding the clue to the issue, which it made , 
known in a shock of irony only when the issue was visibly de-/ 
termined. And such irony as this has a great part in securing the 
dramatic satisfaction with which such a tragedy closes. If we 
look merely at the bare events, we find all parties evened in a 
common ruin; the innocent Desdemona and the nobly erring 
Othello are just as certainly overthrown as the stupid Roderigo 
and lago the arch-villain. But, for a difference, a halo of pathos 
surrounds the fallen Othello and Desdemona; not entirely free 
from error, they have nevertheless perished because they are too 
nobly trustful for the evil surroundings in which they are placed. 
But in the fall of Roderigo and lago — in the spectacle of lust 
slain by craft, craft overwhelmed in the ruins of its own crafti- 
ness — there is no redeeming pathos, but only the bitterness of 
mocking nemesis ; they have lived the life of villains, and the 
irony of fate has at last shown them up for fools. 



XII 



THE MOMENTUM OF CHARACTER AND THE SWAY OF 
CIRCUMSTANCE 

Personal will, we have seen in the preceding chapter, is the 
most obvious of the forces moving the moral world ; and it has 
its dramatic representation in intrigue and irony. Our next 
question is of other forces that tend to limit individual will. 
Two expressions rise naturally to the tongue as expressing the 
modification of individual action — heredity and environment. 
We have to consider the relation of these to the dramatic 
philosophy of Shakespeare. 

The force of heredity does not seem to be prominent in 
Shakespeare's world : we should rather say that it is conspicu- 
ous by its absence. Perhaps the strongest form of heredity is 
racial influence, and a chapter of this work^ has been devoted 
to certain racial characteristics of Roman life ; yet, as succes- 
sive periods of Roman history were portrayed in the three plays, 
we saw the specially Roman view of life yielding steadily before 
the growing freedom of individuality, racial heredity becoming 
diluted by advancing cosmopolitanism. Again, we know both 
the parents of Hamlet, and the divided character of the hero 
might suggest that the strength inherited from his father was 
modified by weakness derived from his mother. Yet the same 
play gives us the two brothers, as unlike " as Hyperion to a 
satyr," with nothing in the way of ancestry to account for the 
difference. Similarly, nothing is suggested to explain why Henry 
of Monmouth should be so diverse from his brothers ; or why 

1 Chapter VI. 
242 



THE MOMENTUM OF CHARACTER 243 

such a father as Bolingbroke should have such a son as Henry ; 
or why such a son as Hotspur should come from such parents 
as the hesitating Northumberland and his unwarlike wife. Dif- 
ference of maternity, of course, would account for the differences 
between Edgar and Edmund in King Lear, or between the prince 
and Don John in Much Ado, or between Faulconbridge and the 
rightful heir in Ki7ig John. But this is not suggested to explain 
why Lear should have daughters so different, nor why there 
should be such opposite characters in the family of Sir Rowland 
de Boys. It seems strange that Cymbeline should be the father 
of such a daughter as Imogen, and such sons as the two stolen 
boys ; in the same play the very courtiers remark upon the dif- 
ficulty of heredity in such a case as the Queen and Cloten — 

— that such a crafty devil as is his mother 
Should yield the world this ass ! 

In saying this I do not mean to suggest that Shakespeare is in 
any way untrue to life ; in the world of the actual it is clear that 
heredity serves as a very uncertain criterion for the analysis of 
individuality. Where the question is of pigeons, or even of race 
horses, the qualities in consideration are so comparatively simple 
that careful breeding may produce very definite results. In 
human nature the force of heredity is displayed chiefly in the 
lower stages of civilisation ; as we rise higher in the scale of 
personality tokens of hereditary resemblance approach nearer 
and nearer to curiosities. In any cas^, there is no need to dwell 
long upon this topic. Our question is, not simply the facts of 
the Shakespearean world, but the representation of those facts 
in dramatic forms ; and I am unable to see that any element of 
dramatic form is associated with the expression of heredity, as 
this term is generally understood. 

There is, however, something, not usually comprised under the 
term 'heredity ' and yet closely akin to it, which plays a great part 
in every dramatic system. In the number of a man's ancestors 
we ought in strictness to reckon the man himself ; not only is 



244 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

** the boy the father to the man," but the past of each individual 
Ufe is in some sort an ancestor to his present and his future. 
Heredity is habit writ large : certain repeated actions have by 
repetition become easy, they pass into tendencies, they stiffen 
into habits ; and such habits can be transmitted from one in- 
dividual to another, whether by the force of imitation, or of 
training, or perhaps by physical propagation. In the same way, 
if we take a single life at any point of its history, we shall find 
accumulated tendencies and habits which are passing on from 
the past to the future of that life as forces, exerting just such 
influences as would be exerted by habits and qualities derived 
by that life from ancestral lives. Such tendencies transmitted 
from the past to the present will be varied, and often mutually 
antagonistic ; but as we compare and set one against another we 
are usually able to strike a balance, or determine a mathematical 
resultant of them all, which we call the individual's ' character ' : 
the mark or stamp distinguishing him from other individuals. 
Obviously, character is one of the forces of life, and a force 
modifying free individual action ; we call the man a free agent, 
yet we expect that he will act according to his 'character.' The 
exact nature of character as a force may be expressed by the 
word momentum. Steam or other power has set a wheel in mo- 
tion ; when the power is withdrawn the motion continues, and 
must continue until the acquired momentum is counteracted by 
friction or other forces. Similarly, a man's character is the 
momentum of his past: new influences may change the char- 
acter, but in the absence of these the character acquired in the 
past is a real force carrying the individual in definite directions. 
It is hardly necessary to remark that character is one of the 
universally recognised elements of dramatic effect. The posi- 
tion then of character as one of the forces modifying personal 
will becomes important in the moral system of the Shakespearean 
world. The poet has given us two specially interesting studies 
of this topic, the momentum of character : one may be briefly 
stated, the other will need detailed analysis. 



THE MOMENTUM OF CHARACTER 245 

The Caskets Story in The Merchant of Venice is a dramatised 
problem.^ The hand of Portia, and all her wealth, is by her 
father's will destined to the suitor who shall choose rightly 
between three caskets. What grounds of choice are there for 
the successive candidates ? One casket is of gold, another of 
silver, a third of lead ; the golden casket has the inscription — 

Who chooseth me shall gain what many men desire. 
There is another inscription for the silver casket — 

Who chooseth me shall get as much as he deserves. 
Yet another inscription is on the casket of lead — 

Who chooseth me must give and hazard all he hath. 

If there is an inclination to connect the metal of the casket 
with the idea of success or failure, this may be overthrown by 
some different suggestions from the mottoes ; if after elaborate 
balancing of metal against motto and motto against metal 
ingenuity can still find some preponderance in favour of one 
alternative, there is yet a further doubt whether — in what pre- 
sents itself as a puzzle to guess — the preponderance may not 
have been anticipated by the testator v/ho propounds the puzzle, 
and so discounted. To all appearance the prize of Portia is 
staked upon absolute chance. 

Such is the problem ; what is the solution as worked out in the 
incident dramatised ? We are permitted to hear in part the 
train of argument by which each suitor, as he thinks, is being 
led to his decision ; all the while we are in a position to see 
that, not their reasoning, but their whole character in reality 
fixes their choice. The prince of Morocco has been moulded 
by royal position in a country in which royalty is a sort of 
divinity : anything below gold is secretly repugnant to him, 
however he may reason ; moreover, his soliloquy betrays that 

1 This has been worked out at length in my Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist, 
Chapter I. 



246 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

the desire of many men has been the real bait to bring him 
from his distant home, and not the worth of Portia. The prince 
of Arragon has been stamped into a character by aristocracy, 
and its theory of the rule of desert : 

O . . . that clear honour 

Were purchased by the merit of the wearer! 

How many then should cover that stand bare! 

How many be commanded that command ! 

How much low peasantry would then be glean'd 

From the true seed of honour ! and how much honour 

Picked from the chaff and ruin of the times 

To be new-varnish'd ! 

Accordingly he ' assumes desert ' : and the silver casket betrays 
him. Bassanio alone has come in the character of a true lover, 
to whom the giving and hazarding of all for his love is more 
blessed than any receiving. Thus the incident as a whole — 
under the appearance of men reasoning in an issue where we 
see reasoning is a futile weighing of evenly balanced alternatives 
— in reality presents the momentum of character : the respective 
characters of three men, formed by the reasonings and choices 
of their whole past, have had force to carry them over a crisis 
in which conscious choice was no more than a self-deception. 

But for the momentum of character the supreme illustration 
is the career of Macbeth. In appreciating character as a force 
the first step is to form a clear conception of the particular 
individuality in its essential features. Here a difficulty arises : 
the popular conception of Macbeth is one which, as it appears 
to me, is wholly at variance with the evidence of the play. It 
dates from the period when Shakespeare, ignored by the scholar- 
ship of the age, was left to the theatre; and, naturally, the 
bias of stage interpretation is rather towards what is impressive 
in the acting than what rests upon the weighing of evidence. 
This traditional reading of the hero — apart from the question 
of its correctness — is no doubt interesting in itself. It is that 



THE MOMENTUM OF CHARACTER 24/ 

of a great soul overborne by external influence : some say, the 
influence of his wife ; others would put it, the temptation of the 
Witches ; yet others would combine the two. Such a view of 
Macbeth appears to me in flat contradiction to the text of the 
play. A single passage ' is sufficient to disprove it, while the 
view of the hero suggested in that passage is in harmony with 
all that appears of Macbeth from beginning to end. Let us 
commence by examining this crucial point of the drama. 

The situation is that Macbeth is debating whether he shall 
not drop the plan that has been arranged for Duncan's murder ; 
Lady Macbeth is holding her husband to the plot. In answer 
to a taunt of cowardice Macbeth has spoken big words : 

I dare do all that may become a man ; 
Who dares do more is none. 

Unfortunately, Lady Macbeth is able to make this rejoinder: 

What beast was't then 
That made you break this enterprise to me? . . . 

Nor time nor place 
Did then adhere, and yet you would make both : 
They have made themselves. 

Macbeth does not contradict : we have it then, on the admis- 
sion of the parties themselves, that it was Macbeth who proposed 
the murder of Duncan to his wife, and not Lady Macbeth to her 
husband. When was this proposal made ? Since the opening of 
the drama Macbeth and his wife have not been together until the 
day when the above words are spoken. The reference cannot 
be to some interview earlier in the same day, because of the 
note of time Lady Macbeth gives — 

^Macbeth: I. vii, from 29. Mrs. Siddons [quoted in the Variorum (second) 
edition, page 473] says, " There can be no doubt that Macbeth, in the first instance, 
suggested the design of assassinating the King." 



248 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

Nor time nor place 
Did then adhere, etc. 

These words can apply only to the visit of Duncan ; and this 
visit was arranged, and made known by Macbeth to his wife, 
before Macbeth arrived at his castle.^ Nor can the proposal of 
treason — as I have sometimes heard it suggested — have been 
made in the letter sent to Lady Macbeth.^ It would seem to be 
a purposeless absurdity that a man should write a suggestion of 
treason and murder to a wife he will presently see ; moreover, 
we hear Lady Macbeth reading the letter, which seems to be all 
about the meeting with the Witches ; when it has been read, 
Lady Macbeth's comment implies just the absence of what it is 
suggested that the letter might have contained : 

I do fear thy nature ; 
It is too full o' the milk of human kindness 
To catch the nearest way. 

There is no escape from the conclusion that, at some time 
before the commencement of the drama, and thus before the 
meeting between Macbeth and the Witches, Macbeth had opened 
the scheme of murder to his wife. One thing more is implied 
by this important passage. Lady Macbeth goes on to use 

strange language. 

I have given suck, and know 
How tender 'tis to love the babe that milks me : 
I would, while it was smiling in my face, 
Have pluck'd my nipple from his boneless gums, 
And dashed the brains out, had I so sworn as you 
Have done to this. 

It appears then that Macbeth's 'breaking' of the enterprise 
to his wife was no cautious suggestion of treason, but a violent 
oath of resolve. How can the popular tradition of Macbeth, as 
a soul ruined by others, stand against the positive revelation of 
this passage, which carries us back to a period before the com- 

1 Compare I. v. 32-38. « In I. v. 



THE MOMENTUM OF CHARACTER 249 

mencement of the play, before the meeting of Macbeth with the 
Witches, and exhibits him as breaking to his wife a scheme of 
treason and murder, and swearing to it with a violence which the 
startled wife can convey only by using the most terrible image 
that a mother's mind could call up ? 

When this traditional misapprehension has been cleared out 
of the way, it is not difficult to form a definite conception for 
the character of Shakespeare's Macbeth. So far as an individ- 
ual character can ever be summed up in a single phrase, 
Macbeth is the man of action. In our antithesis of the outer 
and inner life, this personage would stand for one side of the 
antithesis alone. Like Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, an exact 
converse to Shakespeare's Hamlet, Macbeth is strong, quick, full 
of resource, in moments of action ; feeble and vacillating in 
moments of thinking and introspection. To differentiate the 
character still further, two other salient features may be noted, 
though they are natural consequences of the first. As a man of 
action Macbeth is specially discomposed by suspense, the time 
of strong feeling where there is no outlet in deeds. Again, it is 
an age of superstition : unlike Banquo, who doubts, but doubts 
with an open mind, and unlike Lady Macbeth, who ignores the 
supernatural altogether, Macbeth himself is a prey to supersti- 
tion ; the absence of any inner life of his own has left him 
defenceless against what his age accepts. These three things 
— magnificent capacity for action, intolerance of suspense, 
proneness to superstition — make a definite conception for the 
character of Shakespeare's Macbeth, and become a triple clue 
by which it can be recognised in all its phases of development. 

We are now to watch the character so defined gathering force 
and momentum as it passes through successive stages of the 
story. Four stages may be recognised in the developing 
activity of Macbeth. His first crime (the murder of Duncan) is 
a thing of long premeditation and brooding, wath several fluctu- 
ations of purpose. The second crime (the murder of the grooms) 
is the impulse of a single moment. With the third crime (the 



250 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

murder of Banquo) we find something like deliberate enjoyment 
of slaughter. In the fourth stage Macbeth's life is all crime : 
he is hurried from one violence to another by irresistible frenzy 
And, side by side with this increasing capacity for evil action, 
we can see in the hero of the play how suspense grows from an 
uncomfortable feeling to a torturing and settled disease ; we can 
see again how the superstition, which at first was only a wonder, 
comes in time to be for Macbeth his sole refuge and trust. 

Our earliest knowledge of Macbeth, derived from the passage 
of the play analysed above, is that he has devoted himself by 
mighty oath to treason against his king, the time for executing 
the treason being in some future not yet seen. Meanwhile 
Macbeth has become the hero of a successful war ; returning 
from this war he is met by the Witches,^ who hail him as thane 
of Glamis, thane of Cawdor, and finally add — 

Thou shalt be King hereafter! 

Macbeth starts : how is this start to be interpreted ? The 
ordinary view of the hero reads this start as the shock of tempta- 
tion, that moment first presented. But it must be remembered 
that there was nothing strange or guilty in the words of the 
Witches ; Banquo, who is present, and of course reflects the 
ideas of the time, sees nothing sinister. 

Banquo. Good sir, why do you start, and seem to fear 
Things that do sound so fair? 

The crown in the days of our story did not descend according 
to fixed rules ; it was at the moment probable enough that one 
so high in the line of succession (though not the highest) should 
come in time to wear the crown ; it was as natural for fortune- 
tellers to promise Lord Macbeth the throne as it would have 
been for them to promise a young maid a handsome husband. 
But when we know that Macbeth, according to Shakespeare's 
handling of the story, had actually sworn before this to the crime 

1 1, iii, from 38. 



THE MOMENTUM OF CHARACTER 2$ I 

that would take King Duncan's life, then we easily understand 
the start of Macbeth, as he finds the purpose he supposed to be 
the secret of his wife and himself already outside him, seeming 
to glitter in the malicious gleams of a witch's laugh. The inci- 
dent continues ; messengers bring Macbeth tidings of his eleva- 
tion to the thaneships of Glamis and Cawdor ; naturally, such a 
testimony to the prevision of the Weird Sisters plunges Macbeth 
in thought.^ 

This supernatural soliciting 

Cannot be ill, cannot be good : if ill, 

Why hath it given me earnest of success, 

Commencing in a truth ? I am thane of Cawdor : 

If good, why do I yield to that suggestion 

Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair 

And make my seated heart knock at my ribs 

Against the use of nature ? Present fears 

Are less than horrible imaginings ; 

My thought, whose murder — 

(I interrupt to inquire, whence has Macbeth caught the idea of 
murder ? whence, of horrible imaginings ? Not from the inno- 
cent prediction of the Witches : there were many ways — suc- 
cession, election — by which without improbability this kinsman 
of the King might succeed to the crown. It is from Macbeth 's 
own guilty past that all these items of conspiracy have been 
fetched. But let the soliloquy continue.) 

My thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical, 
Shakes so my single state of man that function 
Is smother'd in surmise, and nothing is 
But what is not. 

We are watching Macbeth shaken by suspense ; the common- 
place flattery of the Witch has wakened the sleeping treason, 
and to a nature like Macbeth 's a fearful deed present for the 
doing is more easy to bear than the imagination of the deed in 
the future. But at this point the current of thought changes. 

1 I. iii, from 130. 



252 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

If chance will have me king, why, chance may crown me, 
Without my stir. 

If the natural course of events — as the Witches say, and it 
never occurs to Macbeth to doubt their insight into the future — 
is going to bring the crown to Macbeth, why should he meddle 
with such dangerous matter as treason and murder ? The latter 
train of thought prevails : Macbeth will wait. 

Come what come may, 
Time and the hour runs through the roughest day. 

Thus the final effect of the meeting between Macbeth and the 
Witches is the opposite of what the popular view of the play- 
suggests : Macbeth drops the treason he had formerly sworn to 
execute, and is content to wait on events. 

He soon resumes his treasonable plans; but why? because of 
a fresh appeal to his practical nature. This is a proclamation 
of a Prince of Cumberland,^ — the title of an heir apparent to 
the Scotch throne, as the title Prince of Wales still describes the 
heir apparent to the throne of England. Such an incident 
removes Macbeth's chance of attaining the crown by natural 
succession ; he must fall back upon his former guilty purpose. 

The Prince of Cumberland ! that is a step 
On which I must fall down, or else overleap, 
For in my way it lies. Stars, hide your fires ; 
Let not light see my black and deep desires : 
The eye wink at the hand : yet let that be, 
Which the eye fears, when it is done, to see. 

Now opportunity presents itself, in the unexpected visit of 

King Duncan to his subject's castle. As Macbeth, in advance 

of Duncan, enters his castle, he is met by his wife with the 

words : 

You shall put 

This night's great business into my dispatch.* 
1 1, iv, from 35. 2 i, y. 68. 



THE MOMENTUM OF CHARACTER 253 

As a result of this step on the part of Lady Macbeth the man 
of action is left with nothing to do ; all the interval of waiting 
till night shall make murder possible is for Macbeth a period of 
prolonged suspense, and he is accordingly plunged in vacillation 
and dread. This explains his extraordinary conduct in leaving 
the table at which his king is supping/ and going aside to pour 
out his feverish thoughts in soHloquy. The famous soliloquy ^ of 
Macbeth has been so grandly worded by the poet as to cast 
a glamour of grandeur upon the speaker. But if we look at the 
naked thought beneath the clothing of words, we find nothing 
but the practical man's weighing of practical consequences. 
Macbeth says to himself distinctly that it would be well to do 
the deed, if only he could be secured against the consequences ; 
against the consequences in this life, for he would " jump the 
life to come." Macbeth sees clearly that the murder of the King 
would outrage loyalty, hospitality, pity, kinship ; but his thought 
is as to the effect of these outraged feehngs on others, in setting 
all Scotland weeping ; he shows no sign of revolting against 
such outrage in his own heart. At this point ^ his wife joins 
Macbeth ; and the scene becomes increasingly significant. 
Those who hold the traditional view of the play are accustomed 
to lay special stress upon this phase of the story ; here, at least, 
(they say) we have Macbeth seeking to abandon his treason, and 
his wife holding him to his purpose. But careful study of the 
text will not support this view: Macbeth 's words have their 
reference, not to abandoning treason, but to postponing it. We 
have seen that it is Macbeth himself who originated the purpose 
to murder Duncan ; Lady Macbeth is responsible for one par- 
ticular plan of execution — the murder of the King in her castle 
that very night. The dialogue at this point turns upon the 
latter only : Macbeth sees the risk of such a project, and would 
drop it and trust to some future opportunity. 
Macbeth, We will proceed no further in this business.'* 

1 1, vii. 29. 3 I. vii. 29. 

2 I. vii. 1-28. * I. vii. 31 ; compare I. v. 68. 



254 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

(The reader will remember Lady Macbeth's phrase in a pre- 
ceding scene : " You shall put this night's great business into 
my dispatch.") 

Macbeth. He hath honour'd me of late ; and I have bought 
Golden opinions from all sorts of people, 
Which would be worn now in their newest gloss, 
Not cast aside so soon.^ 

Macbeth has just been elevated in rank, and is at the height of 
his popularity; with a dreadful instinct of economy the prac- 
tical man suggests it would be well to get all that can be got out 
of these advantages, before risking them by a suspicious deed. 
What other meaning can the words bear? If it is suggested 
that compunction of conscience and sense of gratitude to Duncan 
are rising in Macbeth, how ridiculous the sentence becomes ! it 
can only be paraphrased thus : Duncan has been kind to me, 
and I must not murder him so soon I These words so soofi are 
of themselves sufficient proof that the question is of postponing, 
not of abandoning treason. The scene proceeds with the pas- 
sage already analysed. We have the taunt, the rejoinder, the 
reminder of Macbeth's original proposal and violent oath. At 
last the real thought of Macbeth comes out — 

If we should fail?^ 

Then Lady Macbeth puts her full scheme before her husband — 
to drug the tired grooms and make the deed seem theirs. 
Macbeth's practical instinct seizes a feasible scheme, he inter- 
rupts his wife, and finishes her plan for her; with admiring 
exultation he accepts the murder plan, and never hesitates until 
it is accomplished. 

It is now a period of action,^ and Macbeth is seen in his 
strength ; as he stands in the castle yard at night, waiting for 
his wife's signal, his words breathe exultation and a sense of 
mastery. Here we get the first of several phenomena which 

1 L vii. 32-35. 2 I. vii. 59. 8 IL i, ii. 



THE MOMENTUM OF CHARACTER 255 

illustrate the peculiar psychology of Macbeth — his tendency to 
project his thoughts in objective forms ; it is part of his general 
superstition that he has such difficulty in separating between 
objective and subjective, in distinguishing quickened imagi- 
nation from external reality. In this early stage, however, 
Macbeth has some control over superstition ; when his intentness 
upon murder has taken form as a dagger floating in the air and 
marshalling him the way that he is going, he does question 
whether it is a false creation, or whether his eyes are worth all 
the rest of his senses. It is noteworthy that in this, as in other 
cases of the same phenomenon, the objective form changes with 
the changing thoughts of Macbeth ; as the excited imagination 
hurries from beginning to end of the deed, the appearance of the 
dagger undergoes a corresponding variation : 

I see thee still ; 
And on thy blade and dudgeon gouts of blood, 
Which was not so before.^ 

The intense stillness is broken by the signal bell : unhesitat- 
ingly Macbeth passes into the sacred apartments of his royal 
guest, lightly snatches the daggers from the heavily snoring 
grooms, with a warrior's sureness of stroke plunges them into 
the King's body, and draws them forth streaming with blood. ^ 
The boundary of murder is passed : what response will the 
universe make ? A sleepy laugh : a nightmare cry of ' Murder' ; 
two sleepers half awaking ; a ' God bless us ! ' and an * Amen' : 
these weird omens quiver through the superstitious soul of a 
warrior who would have known how to encounter a room full of 
rousing guards. But there is more than superstition : Macbeth, 
who can never endure a single moment's suspense, must wait^ ^ 
until the half-wakened sleepers have slept again. Intent on the 
one question, whether the guards are yet asleep, Macbeth finds 

1 11. i. 45. 

2 The scene in the King's chamber has to be inferred from details in II. ii. 

8 Compare II. ii. 24 : " I stood and heard them." 



256 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

his thoughts travelling outside him, and becoming objective as 

a voice : ^ 

Sleep no more ! 
Macbeth does murder sleep , . . 

As Macbeth whispers the incident to his wife he cannot make 
her understand, he cannot make us understand, whether this 
was a real voice, how much was his own thought. But as he 
stands in panic of suspense the shriek of an owl'^ above his 
head plunges him into the depths of demoralisation, and, for- 
getful of all, he speaks aloud ^ as he springs down the steps to 
reach the courtyard. Amid the tempest that just begins to howl 
Macbeth incoherently seeks to make known what has happened ; 
reminded that he has spoiled the plot by bringing the grooms' 
daggers ^ away he is helpless to repair the mistake, and his wife 
must do what the warrior dares not face. The tempest is now 
furious : but through its bowlings is heard the knocking of those 
who are come to wake the King ; so demoralised still is Macbeth, 
through his moment of suspense and shock of ill omen, that he 
has a vague fear that this knocking will wake the King, until the 
approach of a call to act steadies his brain, and he realises the 
whole situation : 

Wake Duncan with thy knocking ! I would thou couldst ! 

There is an interval of a minute or two — it cannot be more * 
— and Macbeth appears before us again a totally changed man. 
The chamberlains entering the courtyard encounter their host 
as a nobleman of dignified bearing: the man of action easily 
attains self-control when it is a question of meeting an emer- 
gency in the presence of his fellow-men. The awful discovery is 
made, and loud-voiced consternation rouses the castle : Macbeth 
plays perfectly his role of startled innocence. He seizes the 
hand of Lennox, and the two rush to the scene of death, as if to 



1 II. ii. 35. 2 n. ii. 16, 3 n. ii. 17. 4 II. ii, from 48. 

s The knocking within makes Scenes ii and iii (of Act II) continuous. 



THE MOMENTUM OF CHARACTER 257 

see whether the tidings can be true.^ But a moment of crisis is 
awaiting Macbeth. The two nobles leave the courtyard together, 
and return together : it can be but a single second that Macbeth 
lingers behind in the royal chamber after Lennox has left it. 
But that instant was a moment of horrible suspense : there were 
the grooms heavily sleeping, soon to be roughly wakened and 
given opportunity to tell their tale : the guilty man cannot wait, 
but in overpowering impulse of action stabs the grooms, and 
thereby ruins the deeply laid plot. It is true that when he has 
recovered himself in the presence of the courtiers listening to 
Lennox's horrified description of the scene, Macbeth almost 
repairs his blunder by the innocent way in which he makes 
known what he has done.^ 

Macbeth. O, yet I do repent me of my fury, 
That I did kill them. 

Macdt^ff. Wherefore did you so? 

Macbeth. Who can be wise, amazed, temperate and furious, 

Loyal and neutral, in a moment ? . . . Here lay Duncan, 
His silver skin laced with his golden blood, 
And his gash'd stabs look'd like a breach in nature 
For ruin's wasteful entrance : there, the murderers 
Steep'd in the colours of their trade . . . 

It is a splendid piece of acting, but of no avail : every hearer 
seizes the truth, and it is only accident that saves Macbeth. 
Lady Macbeth's timely fainting ^ produces a moment's diversion, 
and the courtiers feel they must pause * before determining the 
question of guilt : in that hour's pause the flight of the King's 
sons turns suspicion in another direction,^ and instead of holding 
Macbeth guilty the nobles call him to the throne. 

Our review of the story has passed through two out of the 
four stages of Macbeth's life. We have seen how his first crime 
was the close of a long period of brooding and of changing pur- 

1 II. iii, from 70. 8 II. iii. 123. 

2 II. iii. 112. * II. iii, from 132. 

fi Compare II. iii. 127-129 with II. iv. 22-32. 



258 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

pose ; when once he had passed the boundary line between in. 
nocence and guilt the evil in Macbeth had attained a sudden 
impetus, and the murder of the grooms was the suggestion and 
execution of a single moment of time. We pass to a third stage, 
in which evil will have gained a still surer hold upon the sinner. 
But our first note of this third stage is the way in which the 
feeling of suspense, hitherto a thing of recurrence, has now 
become to Macbeth a continuous agony. 

Macbeth. We have scotch'd the snake, not kill'd it . . . 

But let the frame of things disjoint, both the worlds suffer, 

Ere we will eat our meal in fear, and sleep 

In the affliction of these terrible dreams 

That shake us nightly : better be with the dead, 

Whom we, to gain our peace, have sent to peace, 

Than on the torture of the mind to lie 

In restless ecstasy.^ 

It is indeed this torture of suspense which leads to Macbeth's 
third crime, the murder of Banquo. For we must distinguish : 
the precise issue here is not simply the slaying of Banquo — 
sooner or later the rivalry of the two men must have ended in 
violence^ — but the slaying of Banquo at the precise moment 
when he is slain. The time is so close to the death of Duncan 
that it would be impossible but that the one crime should draw 
attention to the other ; in actual fact, one scene ^ of the play 
brings out, in the innuendoes of Lennox, that the suspicions 
diverted from Macbeth by the flight of Duncan's sons are all 
brought back again by the murder of Banquo. How comes it 
that the politic Macbeth acts so rashly ? The clue is given in 
his words to his rival : "* 

We hear, our bloody cousins are bestow'd 
In England and in Ireland, not confessing 
Their cruel parricide, filling their hearers 

1 III. ii. 13. 8 III. vi. 

2 Compare III. i. 49-72. * III. i. 30. 



THE MOMENTUM OF CHARACTER 259 

With strange invention : but of that to-morrow, 
When therewithal we shall have cause of state 
Craving us jointly. 

It appears that the time is the day preceding a Council of State 
in which the King and his nobles must hear for the first time 
the representations of Duncan's sons, who at present are supposed 
by all to be the murderers of their father. Precisely as in the 
matter of the grooms, Macbeth cannot endure the suspense of 
waiting for the critical moment; and this torturing suspense 
impels him, in the face of every reason of policy to the con- 
trary, to get rid of the most formidable of the councillors. As 
to its mode of operation, this third crime of Macbeth displays 
deliberate contrivance, appreciation of professional murderers 
as tools of crime, and even a suggestion of the artistic enjoy- 
ment that comes with facility.^ Macbeth will not in plain terms 
reveal his purpose to his wife, but this is the tone in which he 
speaks of it. 

Then be thou jocund : ere the bat hath flown 

His cloistered flight, ere to black Hecate's summons 

The shard-borne beetle with his drowsy hums 

Hath rung night's yawning peal, there shall be done 

A deed of dreadful note . . . Come, seeling night, 

Scarf up the tender eye of pitiful day ; 

And with thy bloody and invisible hand 

Cancel and tear to pieces that great bond 

Which keeps me pale ! Light thickens ; and the crow 

Makes wing to the rooky wood : 

Good things of day begin to droop and drowse ; 

Whiles night's black agents to their preys do rouse. 

Thou marvell'st at my words : but hold thee still ; 

Things bad begun make strong themselves by ill. 

It is in the reaction from this third crime that we see most 
clearly the advancing hold of superstition upon Macbeth. From 

1 Compare, ^eoexally, III. i. from 72: and III. ii. from 37. 



26o THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

the first he has taken for granted the supernatural, as repre- 
sented in the oracles of the Weird Sisters ; and from the first 
we have noted his tendency to project his thoughts as external 
sights and sounds. But in the case of the airy dagger Macbeth 
could question ; even when he describes the voice crying, " Sleep 
no more," he at least leaves a confusion between thought and 
sound. But in the apparition of Banquo's Ghost Macbeth has 
lost all power to discriminate between objective and subjective. 
It is only an apparition : no eye sees it but Macbeth 's, and the 
stage-directions are only intended to assist us as to what Mac- 
beth is supposed to see. Yet not only is Macbeth slow in 
realising this fact, even after his wife has spoken to him, but 
from beginning to end of the scene his peculiar psychology is 
illustrated, and successive stages of his thinking reflect them- 
selves in successive modifications of the apparition. 

It is necessary to analyse the scene ^ with some minuteness. 
We must imagine a banqueting chamber, and a table of horse- 
shoe shape, the curved end towards the side of the chamber 
adjoining the kitchen and offices, where a crowd of servants are 
standing ; the other end flanked by two chairs of state, and 
pointing towards the hall in which the guests are assembling. 
Macbeth leads the procession into the banqueting chamber, and 
ceremoniously hands his queen to one of the chairs of state ; 
instead of taking the other himself he passes forward with the 
words : 

Ourself will mingle with society 

And play the humble host. 

Our hostess keeps her state. 

To the guests this seems no more than an act of graceful con- 
descension ; Macbeth 's real purpose in keeping for himself the 
middle seat at the curved end of the horseshoe is to be near the 
crowd of servants, so that he can, without difficulty, communicate 
with the messenger he is so anxiously awaiting. Even before 

1 III. iv. 



THE MOMENTUM OF CHARACTER 26 1 

he has taken his seat he catches sight of the murderer ; forget- 
ting state, he passes on to him and says : 

There's blood upon thy face. 

We may be sure that a professional bravo would know his busi- 
ness better than to pass through a crowd of servants with tokens 
of crime about him : the blood is of course in Macbeth's imagi- 
nation. The news is spoken, and the fearful shock of safety 
and danger mixed makes the King's brain reel. But a voice 
from the Queen recalls him to the duties of host, and Macbeth, 
advancing toward the table, resolves — with the quickness of a 
man of action — to prepare beforehand for the inevitable dis- 
covery, and let the court know his devotion to Banquo. As he 
speaks his words of regret for the absence of their chief guest, 
the apparition fills the vacant seat in the centre of the curve. 
Macbeth is still standing between the table and the servants : 
what he sees is only the form of the ghostly figure, indistinguish- 
able from any other figure of a guest ; as he says, the table simply 
seems full. But when other guests point to the empty chair, we 
must suppose that the apparition turns and faces his murderer. 

Macbeth. Which of you have done this ? 

Lords. What, my good lord ? 

Macbeth. Thou canst not say I did it : never shake 
Thy gory locks at me. 

Evidently the apparition has undergone a change : had there 
been " gory locks " upon the head at first, Macbeth could not 
have mistaken it for the figure of an ordinary guest in pronounc- 
ing the table full. In the wild scene that follows still further 
change is evident. 

Macbeth. The times have been 

That, when the brains were out, the man would die, 
And there an end ; but now they rise again, 
With twenty mortal murders on their crowns. 



262 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

The murderer in describing the deed to Macbeth had spoken of 
"twenty trenched gashes on his head, the least a death to 
nature " : ^ the detail has sunk in Macbeth's excited mind, and 
reproduced itself in the apparition. In time, Macbeth is made to 
understand that no eye but his own has seen the ghost. There 
is now one more chance for the man of action to recover the 
ground lost by his blunder. Macbeth will pursue his policy ^ of 
speaking endearingly of Banquo : hitherto he has been taken by 
surprise, supposing that all recognised the ghost, but now he 
determines by force of will to keep down his tremors, and 
bravely face the apparition, which he knows his words will re- 
call. So he strains his nerves, and proposes the health of 
Banquo. The ghost reappears : but in what form ? 

Macbeth. Avaunt ! and quit my sight ! let the earth hide thee ! 
Thy bones are marrowless, thy blood is cold ; 
Thou hast no speculation in those eyes 
Which thou dost glare with. 

The idea of blood and murder in general, the idea of Banquo as 
a living man like other men, Banquo bleeding, Banquo pierced 
with twenty mortal wounds, Banquo a corpse dead and moulder- 
ing in the grave ; these are naturally the successive stages of 
Macbeth's thought at this crisis, and these are the successive 
forms presented by the apparition, which only the criminal's own 
brain has created. So completely has imagination now become 
reality. 

We have reached the fourth and last stage of Macbeth's 
career. It is now no longer a question of single crimes : a daily 
diet^ of violence and horror afflicts Scotland; beholders speak 
of madness or valiant fury ; Macbeth himself expresses the 
accelerated impetus of his downward rush, as he says that his 
deeds must be acted ere they may be scanned."* Before this 
point superstition has been his ruin ; yet from the scene of the 

1 III. iv. 27. » IV. iii. 4. 

2 From line 88. * III. iv. 140. 



THE MOMENTUM OF CHARACTER 263 

apparition he betakes himself to the Weird Sisters,^ and makes 
the supernatural his sole refuge. But what are we to say as to 
the third note of Macbeth's character ? Already suspense had 
become to him a settled state of torture ; in his final stage the 
torture of suspense yields to its opposite. The Witches delude 
their victim with ambiguous oracles : Macbeth feels a sense of 
calm trust replacing his gnawing dread. ^ 

Sweet bodements ! good ! 
Rebellion's head, rise never till the wood 
Of Birnam rise, and our high-placed Macbeth 
Shall live the lease of nature, pay his breath 
To time and mortal custom. 

It is just as, in a physical body decaying with disease, there 
comes a point where agonising pain gives place to a numbness, 
which means mortification. Beyond the stage of painful sus- 
pense there comes to Macbeth the stage of sweet security, which 
is the mortification of the soul. And from such security Mac- 
beth is awakened only by the shock of final ruin. 

Such then is the clearly marked character of this famous 
hero of Shakespearean drama, and such is the movement 
through which, with ever increasing force, that character is 
hurried. He is the man of action, intolerant of suspense, 
defenceless against popular superstition. Crime draws him on 
through stages of long hesitation, of sudden impulse, of satisfied 
acceptance, of headlong passion. At first he can reason with 
suspense, then it becomes an unmanning bewilderment in which 
he ruins the scheme he has so much admired ; then suspense 
becomes a chronic disease ; finally it yields to the more terrible 
opposite stage of blind security. Superstition is, at first, one of 
the sources to which Macbeth looks for guidance ; later, ominous 
words of sleepers are enough to drive him from mastery of a 
crisis to helpless imbecility ; soon he is unable to distinguish 
superstition and reality ; at last, superstition is his only hope. 

1 III. iv. 132. 2 IV. i. 96. 



264 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

By free choice and wilful passion Macbeth has embraced for him- 
self a career of crime ; when once he has brought his life to the 
point of passing from purpose to murderous deed, he has attained 
a terrible momentum of character which hurls him to his ruin. 



Heredity is a limitation upon personal will from within ; a 
corresponding limitation from without is expressed by the term 
* environment.' In a sense, the whole universe may be consid- 
ered as the environment of each individual in it. The present 
chapter, however, confines itself to the more immediate environ- 
ment that we call circumstance ; remoter forces will be treated 
later. 

The influence of circumstances upon individual action is a 
thing too obvious to be interesting, too multiform to admit of 
analysis. Here, as in other cases, our question is whether 
there is any association of dramatic form with the force of 
circumstance. Those who take an interest in the analysis of 
plot will recognise something which answers to this description. 
Shakespeare's plots are harmonies of several stories, or, as they 
are technically called, actions, combined in a single design. 
When a plot has been analysed into its constituent actions, there 
is generally one of these which is of a different character from 
all the rest ; it is the Enveloping Action lying outside the others, 
and seeming to envelop them, like the frame of a picture or the 
fringe round a pattern. This element of dramatic plot cor- 
responds to something in real life. The main force in life (we 
have seen) is individual will ; but the individual is a part of the 
state or community, and this state has a life and a movement of 
its own, a broader sphere of action in which the personal actions 
proper to stories are merged. To take the simplest illustration. 
A story turns upon the love of a man and a maiden ; the rise 
and progress of this love, its difficulties, interruptions, and happy 
restoration. Perhaps there is nothing that these two individuals 
think less about than the politics of the country in which they 



THE SWAY OF CIRCUMSTANCE 265 

reside. Yet the course of its political history may greatly affect 
the story of love : war may break out, the lovers may be 
separated, separations may produce jealousy and rivalry : after 
all, the course of true love may have run smoothly or roughly 
according to the twists and turns of political history. The 
enveloping action in fiction is usually just what we call 'history,' 
as distinguished from ' story ' ; if not exactly history, it is some 
sphere of action larger and broader than the individualmterests 
which are the proper sphere of story. 

In the play of Richard the Third we saw how the enveloping 
action was the Wars of the Roses; the details making up the 
matter of the drama are so many items in the political conflicts 
of Lancaster and York. In Romeo and Juliet the enveloping 
action is the old feud of Montague and Capulet ; in The 
Merchant of Venice the feud of Jew and Christian. In Cymbehne 
we have the war for subjection or independence between Rome 
and Britain. There is the Florentine war to play a similar part 
in AlVs Well that Ends Well In Lear we find a war of the rival 
countries England and France; in Hamlet a war of Denmark 
and Norway ; in Othello a naval war of Venice with the Turks. 
To most readers, no doubt, this particular element in the various 
plays is of little importance, or it is altogether overlooked. But 
it was otherwise with the poet himself ; and those who delight 
to trace the fine workmanship of the dramatist will see clear 
evidences of design and contrivance in the way this envelopmg 
action is regularly worked into the design of the plot. A good 
illustration is the play of Much Ado about Nothing. Here the 
enveloping action is the war between the Prince and his bastard 
brother: one of those petty faction conflicts with which Italian 
history is rife, of no interest in itself to readers of the story. 
Yet Shakespeare takes pains to insinuate this thread of action 
into the leading points of the movement, letting it just appear 
at the beginning, the turning point, and the end. The defeat of 
Don John makes the opening situation, by which the personages 
are drawn together to exert influence on one another : it is the 



266 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

return from the war which brings Claudio to indulge his love 
for Hero, Benedick to tease and be teased by Beatrice, Don 
John himself in sullen submission to look around for opportuni- 
ties of mischief.^ When the villanous design against Hero's 
honour, which is the foundation of the plot, has been unex- 
pectedly discovered, Don John is compelled to flee, and the 
rebellion which makes the enveloping action is reinstated.^ And 
when this sad complication has at last attained complete and 
happy resolution, though the reader has forgotten all about Don 
John and civil war, yet Shakespeare devotes a few final lines to 
arrival of news that the rebel has once more been defeated, 
and the enveloping action has thus come to a close.^ Another 
example is A Midswmner-Nighf s Dream. The matter of the play 
is the gossamer substance of fairy life, with arbitrary accidents 
of love as fanciful as the title of the poem suggests. Yet all this 
is enclosed in the substantial framework of public life and state 
ceremonial, an enveloping action of the Marriage of Theseus 
and Hippolyta, which connects itself with every thread of the 
design. For this public function the youths of Athens have 
prepared their farcical tragedy ; Oberon and Titania have come 
from infinite distance for this precise occasion ; their mutual 
jealousy is jealousy of the royal bride and bridegroom, their 
renewed amity will crown the wedding day with midnight fairy 
dance ; when in the morning light the human lovers awake 
from their tangled experience, their strange situation is by the 
King and his bride put down to connection with the wedding 
ceremonies and sports: 

No doubt they rose up early to observe 
The rite of May ; and, hearing our intent, 
Came here in grace of our solemnity.* 

The amount of motive influence exerted by the enveloping 
action upon the rest of the movement is substantial, although. 

1 Much Ado I. i, iii. 2 Compare V. ii. 63. 3 v. iv. 127. 

* Midsummer-Night's Dream I. ii ; II. i. 69-76 ; IV. i. 92; IV. L 129, 



THE SWAY OF CIRCUMSTANCE 267 

the influence is indirect. In Richard the Thirds not only is the 
matter of the play part of the Wars of the Roses, but Richard 
himself, and the lesser personages, are a creation of those faction 
fights, and are inspired by the passions of the wars. The feud 
of Montague and Capulet has determined the peculiar type of 
love for the play — the love that is binding together born 
enemies ; the feud makes all the difficulties for this course of 
true love, and turns it finally into a terrible tragedy. Persecu- 
tion of Jews by Christians not only accounts for much in the 
character of Shylock, but even determines largely the action of 
Antonio and other Christians. In Cymbeline, the war has the 
effect of drawing together the personages of the play as the 
movement progresses ; it is this which brings Posthumus and 
lachimo from Italy back to Britain ; it draws Imogen into the 
Roman host and the meeting with her husband ; it attracts the 
royal boys and their foster-father into the conflict in which their 
fresh valour is to reverse the current of events. Notably in Lear 
the French war draws all the several personages to a meeting 
point which makes a crisis. In Ha?nlet, the first thought of 
those who see the Ghost in armour is of the warlike preparations 
going on around them ; our first sight of the hero at court is in 
connection with an embassy which diverts the threatened war 
into another channel ; the casual passage of troops later in the 
play rouses Hamlet to the task in which he has been flagging ; 
when the catastrophe has exhausted the royal house of Denmark, 
Hamlet with dying breath recognises the claims to succession of 
Fortinbras, who is just returning in triumph from the war. An 
interesting case is the play of Love's Labour's Lost. Here the 
enveloping action is a political negotiation: it appears only 
at two points. The arrival of the French princess and her 
suite to conduct this negotiation brings a force of young and 
healthy life to confound the solemn plans of Navarre : humour 
dissolves solemnity, and all gradually works out to a complete 
dramatic finish. But then a turn comes in the enveloping 
action — the death of the French King whom the embassy rep- 



268 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

resents.^ At once a serious tone is thrown over the comic 
denouement ; the love that has been made in jest is concluded 
in earnest. 

' The sway of circumstances : ' this expression, I think, con- 
veys that element of life to which the enveloping action of 
dramatic plot corresponds. Just as the moon, with unseen 
agency and at infinite distance, draws the tides of the sea its 
own way ; just as the swing of Earth on its axis, that no atten- 
tive discrimination can detect, yet carries mankind through its 
phases of day and night : so the enveloping history, remote as it 
may be from individual interest of story, becomes a force to 
mould and sway the story's course. The sway then of cir- 
cumstance, and the momentum of character, make the dramatic 
counterparts to the two most obvious limitations of individual 
will — environment and heredity. 

It may be added, that in certain cases it is the larger life of 
the state and community which the drama brings into promi- 
nence, while individual action with its story interest falls into a 
subordinate place. But this differentiates a special dramatic 
type ; side by side with tragedy and comedy, Shakespeare has 
given us the history, as the play in which the enveloping action 
is predominant over all the rest of the plot. 

1 Love's Labour's Lost V. ii, from 725. 



XIII 

THE PENDULUM OF HISTORY 

Our survey of the Shakespearean world has reached the point 
where, as dramatised in the enveloping action, we have seen history 
enfolding story, the larger life of the state or nation touching, yet 
lying outside, the narrower Hfe of personality. Between the two 
things thus brought together there is one obvious difference. Story 
must, in the nature of things, be complete ; unless the course of 
individual action has run its full round, so that nemesis, pathos, or 
similar principles are caught, there is no story. On the contrary, 
the history that makes an enveloping action is fragmentary ; it is 
but a small arc of a circle extending beyond the field of view. 
Even in the special type of dramas called histories, where the 
enveloping action predominates over all the rest of the plot, the 
limits of a single drama are too strait to comprehend the large 
unity that belongs to history ; other forms of dramatic interest 
obtain here, such as the notoriety of the incidents presented, and 
their appeal to the instinct of patriotism. But the question 
naturally presents itself : If a larger arc of the circle were presented, 
if a sufficiently wide range of national Hfe could be dramatically 
treated, then might not history catch the completeness of story, 
and great historic principles be seen to emerge ? 

It is obvious that there are good materials for the consideration 
of this question in the plays of Shakespeare which treat the history 
of England. They are ten in number ; eight of the ten are con- 
tinuous, or at least named after successive reigns ; the other two 
are indeed separated from the continuous succession, but in a way 
which naturally invites the suggestion so often made, that they 
constitute a prologue and an epilogue to the double tetralogy. 

269 



2/0 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

We are deterred, it is true, from expecting much in the way of 
sustained plan by the mode in which the plays were produced ; 
the later tetralogy was composed before the earlier; moreover, 
in the three parts of Henry the Sixth indications of collaboration, 
and the working over of other materials, are specially clear. But here, 
as always, the question is not of an author and a conscious plan. 
These dramas stage English history, as other plays stage romance 
stories. The real question is, whether the conception of history 
betrayed in this succession of plays is resolvable into anything 
that can be called law or principle. 

To me it appears that we must answer this question in the 
affirmative. A certain principle of history, simple yet highly 
impressive, appears dramatically enunciated in the prologue play, 
worked over on the largest scale in the succession of eight 
historic dramas, and recast with a striking variation in the play 
which serves as epilogue. The principle is best expressed in 
metaphorical language : it is the pendulum swing of events be- 
tween one and the other of two rival interests ; a deep-seated 
alternation in the natural course of things. Such a principle needs, 
however, a corollary. If the general movement is to be a pendu- 
lum-like alternation, this will be the more impressive dramatically if 
it is broken at intervals by what appears like a position of rest : 
not rest in the negative sense, — as if the alternation at that point 
was merely not perceptible, — but a peculiar, striking, exceptional 
evenness between things which before and after are seen rising and 
falHng. Or it may be that there is a pause to gather in fresh 
material, which is itself presently to become the subject of rapid 
mutation. This then is the nature of the movement I am seeking 
in this chapter to trace through the succession of historic plays ; 
a persistent swing in the course of history to and fro, broken by 
parentheses of emphasised rest, or other preparation for fresh 
alternation. 

It is the play of King John which serves as prologue for the 
historic succession. Here we have very clearly marked the two 



THE PENDULUM OF HISTORY 2^1 

interests between which the movement of the plot is to alternate. 
England and France are throughout Shakespeare treated as rival 
countries ; the rivalry in the present case is enhanced by a double 
claim to the English crown ; France has backed the cause of young 
Arthur, while John has his claim supported by the strong argument 
of possession. Yet other forces are added to both sides, to make 
the scale more even. Feminine influence is strong for either 
cause; the passionate young motherhood of Constance is a 
bulwark for Arthur ; the queen mother Elinor brings to John the 
strength of maturity and political capacity. Again, France has an 
ally, the Duke of Austria, who appears always in his robe of lion's 
skin, in token of the proud feat by which he held prisoner the 
magnificent Coeur-de-lion ; naturally he is the enemy of the King 
who is his prisoner's brother. On the other hand the English army 
contains Faulconbridge, bastard son of this Coeur-de-lion, whose 
rude humour loses no opportunity of mocking the lion-like preten- 
sions of Austria, while his rough valour eventually brings the boaster 
to his doom. Between these evenly balanced interests — England 
with its allies, France with its allies— the pendulum of fortune is 
to be seen swinging.^ 

But, as we have seen, the alternation will be the more dramati- 
cally impressive if the movement can start in some evenness of 
poise between the interests that are afterwards to rise and fall. 
This is secured by the curious incident of Anglers, which occupies 
the second act of the play. This Anglers is a fortified city in 
that part of the land of France which at the period of the play 
was an appanage of the English crown. The French King has 
begun the war against John by besieging this place ; his ally and 
the French court are with him in the field. And it is here that 
King John, with his court and his army of invasion, encounters 
his rival. First, there is a discussion of rights and claims between 
the two courts, feminine bitterness and rough humour bearing 

1 For dividing points and exact references compare the scheme of King John in 
the Appendix below, page 365. 



2^2 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

their part in the dialogue. Words proving vain, both armies turn 
to force, and the city is summoned with blast of trumpet. 

First at. Who is it that hath warned us to the walls? 

King Philip. Tis France, for England. 

King John. England, for itself. 

You men of Angiers, and my loving subjects, — 
King Philip. You loving men of Angiers, Arthur's subjects, 

Our trumpet calPd you to this gentle parle, — 
King John. For our advantage ; therefore hear us first. 

Oratory follows from both kings, but the good burghers have a 
plain answer. 

First at. In brief, we are the King of England's subjects ; 

For him, and in his right, we hold this town. 

King John. Acknowledge then the king, and let me in. 

First at. That can we not ; but he that proves the king. 

To him will we prove loyal : till that time 
Have we ramm'd up our gates against the world. 

The citizens of Angiers have exactly anticipated the spirit of the 
future Jacobite toast : 

God bless the King ; God bless our faith's defender ; 
God bless — no harm in blessing — the Pretender : 
But who Pretender is, and who is King, 
God bless us all, that's quite another thing. 

There is nothing to be done except that the two parties determine 
their claims by force. With the stage symbol of alarums and ex- 
cursions a batde is indicated, and then summons is renewed : the 
French herald declaring that victory plays upon the dancing 
banners of the French ; his rival of England proclaiming with 
equal confidence King John commander of this hot malicious day. 
But the burghers have been watching from the walls, and know 
the facts. 

Blood hath bought blood and blows have answer'd blows ; 
Strength match'd with strength, and power confronted power : 
Both are alike ; and both alike we like. 



THE PENDULUM OF HISTORY 2^3 

One must prove greatest : while they weigh so even, 
We hold our town for neither, yet for both. 

Nothing could emphasise more dramatically the even poise of the 
scales in which England and France are being weighed than the 
possibility of a single city thus defying three potentates and their 
armies. Faulconbridge catches the situation, and asks why the 
rival kings let "these scroyles of Anglers" flout them, and why 
they do not unite their forces to level the insolent fort to the 
ground, and afterwards fight out their own quarrel. The counsel 
suits the spirit of the times ; there is a movement for carrying it 
into effect, when the citizens feel the peril of their position, and 
meet the crisis with a proposal of their own. In parley with the 
kings they point to two youthful figures in the rival courts, the 
French Dauphin, and Blanch, niece of the English Kin^. 

He is the half part of a blessed man, 
Left to be finished by such as she ; 
And she a fair divided excellence, 
Whose fulness of perfection lies in him. 

In pompous oratory it is suggested that a union of these two per- 
sons would heal the breach between two kingdoms, and be more 
powerful than cannon to open the fortress gates. The poHcy of 
such a match attracts the elders ; youth and beauty work upon the 
parties concerned ; the project gains ground, and articles of treaty 
are discussed. The evenly balanced conflict has ended in com- 
promise, Faulconbridge alone catching the humour of the situation : 
that King John to bar a title to the whole has voluntarily sur- 
rendered a part, while the champion of conscience has exchanged a 
holy war for a vile peace, all through that great bias of the world 
— Commodity ! 

Now it is precisely with this proposal from the men of Anglers 
that the peculiar movement of the play has started from its posi- 
tion of rest. Up to this point, all has gone to emphasise the even 
balance of the two parties ; when this compromise has been 
accepted, we have the whole power of England, of France, of 



274 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

Austria, concentrated on one side, while on the other side young 
Arthur is left helpless and alone. It is in vain that they talk to 
Constance of the blessedness of peace, and declare that the day 
which has brought it shall be a perpetual holiday. 

Constance. A wicked day, and not a holy day! 

What hath this day deserved? What hath it done, 

That it in golden letters should be set 

Among the high tides in the calendar? 

Nay, rather turn this day out of the week, 

This day of shame, oppression, perjury. 

Or, if it must stand still, let wives with child 

Pray that their burthens may not fall this day, 

Lest that their hopes prodigiously be crossed ; 

But on this day let seamen fear no wreck ; 

No bargains break that are not this day made : 

This day, all things begun come to ill end. 

Yea, faith itself to hollow falsehood change! 

The passion of Constance is the precise measure of the degree to 
which the pendulum of fortune has swung to the side opposed to 
Arthur. Yet it is in the midst of this scene of bitterness between 
Arthur's mother and her former allies that a diversion takes place, 
and, in reality, the sway of movement has begun to turn in an 
opposite direction. 

The diversion has been made by the entrance of the papal 
legate : on his way to England he has met its king in company 
with the King of France. In presence of the two monarchs and 
their courts the legate blurts out certain demands respecting 
quarrels between the Enghsh crown and primate. John is repre- 
sented in this drama as the mouthpiece of England's antagonism 
to papal pretensions. 

John. What earthly name to interrogatories 

Can task the free breath of a sacred king? 

When Philip is shocked at resistance to Holy Church, John speaks 
with more and more of defiance, until the legate thunders excom- 



THE PENDULUM OF HISTORY 2/5 

munication, and King Philip is commanded to loose the hand of an 
arch-heretic. It had happened that the papal legate entered at the 
very moment in which the two kings by a ceremonious hand-clasp 
were signifying their new peace and alhance : round that hand-clasp 
a great contest now wages — Pandulph against John, Constance 
against Elinor, Austria against Faulconbridge ; the newly pledged 
lover and his prospective bride take opposite sides. Arguments as 
to the sacredness of peace and treaty faith seem vain. 

Pandulph. All form is formless, order orderless, 

Save what is opposite to England's love. 

The conflict extends to the very verge of excommunication against 
Philip : only then does he yield. 

Pandtdph. I will denounce a curse upon his head. 

King Philip. Thou shalt not need. England, I will fall from thee. 

Constance. O fair return of banish'd majesty! 

Elinor. O foul revolt of French inconstancy ! 

The loosing of this hand-clasp has symbolised a swing of the 
pendulum from one extreme to the very opposite : a moment 
before Arthur was alone, and all power massed on the side of 
John ; by this change we see the whole strength of France and 
Austria transferred to the support of Arthur, with the addition of 
the spiritual power of Rome and Holy Church, while John must 
face this vast combination without a single ally. 

There is another turning-point, and the pendulum swings back. 
This time it is by ^ the fortune of war ' : providence is not always 
on the side of the big battalions, and, though France, Austria, and 
Rome are all against England, in the actual fight it is England 
that wins. A roaring tempest shatters the French fleet ; their 
armies are disgracefully defeated in the field ; the Duke of Austria 
is slain in battle by Faulconbridge. This Faulconbridge, as a man 
not likely to be frightened by bell, book, and candle, is sent to 
England to seize the wealth of the Church. — 



2/6 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

Ere our coming, see thou shake the bags 
Of hoarding abbots ; imprisoned angels 
Set at liberty : the fat ribs of peace 
Must by the hungry now be fed upon. 

More than all this : little Arthur is taken prisoner by John, and 
given into the sure custody of Hubert. Reversal of fortune could 
not be more complete : Constance appears before us — 

a grave unto a soul ; 
Holding the eternal spirit, against her will, 
In the vile prison of afflicted breath. 

Even the Dauphin of France finds life not worth living : 

Life is as tedious as a twice-told tale 
Vexing the dull ear of a drowsy man. 

Now, it is just at the close of this speech of the Dauphin that 
one more turning-point of the plot must be placed ; the pendulum 
of events prepares to swing again from one extreme to the op- 
posite. This time the change comes through that hidden force 
in things we call ^ reaction ' : the sagacious legate sees how the 
very completeness of John's good fortune will make him reckless 
and unscrupulous ; something will happen to Arthur, there will be 
a revulsion of feeling in England against the evil King, and the 
French prince may claim the crown by virtue of his marriage with 
Lady Blanch. And events turn out precisely as Pandulph prophe- 
sies. The fourth act is filled with dramatic interest of detail, 
especially with reference to the character of Hubert as a man of 
mystery, who plays a deeper part than appears on the surface. 
But the drift of this act in the general plot is to present Arthur 
dead, the blame of it fixed by the national voice on the King, the 
French invading in force, and the English nobles — who constitute 
the mihtary force of the country — deserting in mass to the enemy. 
John is left helpless, with a hostile people behind him, and in 
front an enemy already landed on his shores. 

An adroit device of a desperate man makes another turning- 



THE PENDULUM OF HISTORY 2/7 

point, and introduces one more reversal of the scale of fortune. 
In flat contradiction to his late position as representative of na- 
tional independence, King John in this extremity surrenders his 
crown to Rome, and, at the opening of the fifth act, is seen receiv- 
ing it back as Rome's vassal. Thus one powerful element of the 
combination against him is not only removed, but transferred to 
King John's side. 

Pandulph. It was my breath that blew this tempest up, 
Upon your stubborn usage of the pope ; 
But since you are a gentle convertite, 
My tongue shall hush again this storm of war, 
And make fair weather in your blustering land. 

Of course, the invading prince of France resents thus being made 
a puppet of Roman diplomacy. But meanwhile Faulconbridge, 
embodying the patriotic spirit which repels invasion under any 
pretext, has raised a powerful force to confront Lewis. Provi- 
dence takes the English side, and the French reinforcements are 
wrecked on the Goodwin sands. More strange still : a dying 
nobleman of the French army reveals to the EngHsh a treacherous 
plot against the nobles who had deserted to France. 

Fly, noble English, you are bought and sold ; 
Unthread the rude eye of rebellion 
And welcome home again discarded faith. 
Seek out King John and fall before his feet ; 
For if the French be lords of this loud day, 
He means to recompense the pains you take 
By cutting off your heads : thus hath he sworn 
And I with him, and many moe with me, 
Upon the altar at Saint Edmundsbury ; 
Even on that altar where we swore to you 
Dear amity and everlasting love. . . • 
Commend me to one Hubert with your King : 
The love of him, and this respect besides, 
For that my grandsire was an Englishman, 
Awakes my conscience to confess all this. 



278 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

Thus at this point it is the representative of France who is de- 
feated, deserted, and helpless, and all power has gravitated to the 
English side. 

Yet the course of events dramatised in this play is to see just 
one more swing of the pendulum. King John, victorious against 
the French and in the restored allegiance of his nobles, is suddenly 
conscious that he is doomed never to reap the fruits of victory. 

Poison'd, — ill fare, — dead, forsook, cast off : 

And none of you will bid the winter come 

To thrust his icy fingers in my maw. 

Nor let my kingdom's rivers take their course 

Through my burn'd bosom, nor entreat the north 

To make his bleak winds kiss my parched lips 

And comfort me with cold. 

As Faulconbridge enters, the King ralHes his strength to hear the 
news he brings. 

The tackle of my heart is crack'd and burn'd. 
And all the shrouds wherewith my life should sail 
Are turned to one thread, one little hair : 
My heart hath one poor string to stay it by, 
Which holds but till thy news be uttered. 

The news Faulconbridge brings is that the forces he was leading 
to meet fresh advance of the Dauphin have been overpowered by 
a flood as the Wash was being crossed. At the shock of this loss 
the King dies, and the pendulum swing of the plot ceases. It 
only remains for the papal legate to make peace between the 
countries, and Henry reigns in his father's stead. 

To the modern reader Shakespeare's dramatisation of the reign 
of King John comes as a surprise. There is not a hint of what 
we are accustomed to consider as the characteristic of that reign, 
making it the most critical period of English history ; on the other 
hand, what would seem matter of inferior moment is treated with 
fine workmanship and dramatic vigour. The explanation is easy, if 
this play is to stand as prologue to the succession of histories, and 



THE PENDULUM OF HISTORY 2/9 

if the spirit of history, as conceived by Elizabethan dramatists, 
consisted in the pendulum-hke alternation of fortune. Nowhere 
else do we find the rival interests so evenly balanced, nor the 
balance so constantly emphasised ; nowhere else do we see such 
sharp turns in events, and such great mutations realised in such 
brief intervals. Moreover the whole of this manifold alternation 
is within the limits of a single play, and centres around the single 
personality of King John. 

It is different as we pass on : we now have a succession of eight 
dramas making a connected whole ; the longer period is fit for 
the larger Hfe of history. The two interests between which fortune 
is to alternate remain substantially the same throughout. On the 
one side we have the crown ; on the other side we see, now 
domestic sedition, now foreign war, until the two elements seem 
to unite as court factions grow into the fully developed Wars of 
the Roses. Of course, in the several plays which make up the 
series there is much beside this main interest of historic action 
and reaction. In King John we have had the characters of Faul- 
conbridge, of Hubert and Arthur; in later plays we have the 
personalities of a Hotspur and a Glendower ; the Falstaff under- 
plot in the two parts of Henry the Fourth throws the historic 
interest into the shade. And further, if we divide the eight plays 
into two tetralogies, we get (as earlier chapters of this book have 
pointed out) a rise throughout the three plays of the interest 
which is to dominate the fourth : a rise of Henry Prince of Wales 
into the ideal heroism of Henry the Fifth, a steady development 
of Gloucester into the ideal villany that is to be the note of 
Richard the Third. But the link of continuity which binds the 
eight plays into a whole is this alternation, stretching from play to 
play, between the royal power and its domestic and foreign foes. 

If a position of rest is wanted as a starting-point for a move- 
ment of alternation, we find it surely in that strange sentiment of 
the divine right of kings, which more or less obtains throughout 
Shakespeare's treatment of Enghsh history, but in the play of 



280 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

Richard the Secofid stands out in high reUef from contrast with 
the King who represents it. To Richard the sacred authority of 
the crown seems valuable only as a means of supply for the ex- 
pensive vices he displays in company with his creatures. 

Gaunt. This royal throne of kings, this scepter'd isle, 
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars, 
This other Eden, demi-paradise, 
This fortress built by Nature for herself 
Against infection and the hand of war ; 
This happy breed of men, this little world, 
This precious stone set in the silver sea . . . 
Is now leased out, I die pronouncing it. 
Like to a tenement or pelting farm. 

Frivolity sits upon the throne : none the less gravity bows down 
in pious submission. From this height of divinely constituted 
authority the sway of events is seen bringing the royal power 
down to the depths. The turning-point is dramatically marked.^ 
Richard has been delayed in Ireland by contrary winds, all the 
while that in England rebelhon has been gathering head. At last 
he lands, and fondles with his hand the soil of his kingdom, safe 
now its rightful ruler has returned. 

Not all the water in the rough rude sea 

Can wash the balm off from an anointed king; 

The breath of worldly men cannot depose 

The deputy elected by the Lord : 

For every man that Bolingbroke hath press'd 

To lift shrewd steel against our golden crown, 

God for his Richard hath in heavenly pay 

A glorious angel : then, if angels fight. 

Weak men must fall, for heaven still guards the right. 

From these very words Richard turns to meet the first of a string 
of messengers bearing news of delay, of dispersion, of death, till 
further inquiry becomes useless. 

1 For divisions and exact references throughout this chapter, see scheme of the 
historic plays in the Appendix below, pages 365-369. 



THE PENDULUM OF HISTORY 28 1 

Aumerle. Where is the duke my father with his power? 

King Richard. No matter where ; of comfort no man speak : 
Let's talk of graves, of worms and epitaphs ; 
Make dust our paper and with rainy eyes 
Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth. 
Lef s choose executors and talk of wills : 
And yet not so, for what can we bequeath 
Save our deposed bodies to the ground ? 
Our lands, our lives and all are Bolingbroke's, 
And nothing can we call our own but death, 
And that small model of the barren earth 
Which serves as paste and cover to our bones. 

This passage stands but at the centre of the play ; yet all the rest 
is no more than the swing downward from exalted kingship to 
humiliation, deposition, imprisonment, murder ; the swing upward 
of BoHngbroke, who entered England humbly claiming the prop- 
erty of his deceased father, to the throne vacated by Richard. 

In the plays treating the reign of Henry the Fourth the historic 
alternation is seen to have recommenced. The power which 
hurled Richard from kingship was BoUngbroke in alliance with 
Northumberland : Bolingbroke's was the rival title to the throne, 
Northumberland was the influence to bring round the English 
nobles and lead the revolution. As the first part of Henry the 
Fourth opens we see these firm allies separated : King Boling- 
broke has sunk from security to the necessity of meeting factious 
uprisings in all parts of his dominions, and the link that binds all 
these rebel factions together is Northumberland. Hotspur, the 
warrior of the rebellion, is Northumberland's son; his brother 
Worcester is its statesman; family ties connect the house of 
Northumberland with Wales, and bring the mighty Welsh ma- 
gician Glendower to aid the cause; the Percies, moreover, in 
their period of loyalty, had made conquests in Scotland, and, 
turning rebels, can by restoring prisoners win Douglas and the 
Scotch to their side. To so low a point has the royal power 
declined in contrast with rising rebelhon, that the chief concern 
of the revolting leaders is how they shall divide the country 



282 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

between themselves. A well-known speech of the King not only 
recognises Northumberland as the focus of this widespread sedi- 
tion, but is further important as giving expression, in the midst 
of the shifting incidents, to the thought of alternating fortunes 
as the law of national history.^ 

O God ! that one might read the book of fate, 

And see the revolution of the times 

Make mountains level, and the continent, 

Weary of solid firmness, melt itself 

Into the sea ! and, other times, to see 

The beachy girdle of the ocean 

Too wide for Neptune's hips ; how chances mock, 

And changes fill the cup of alteration 

With divers liquors ! O, if this were seen, 

The happiest youth, viewing his progress through, 

What perils past, what crosses to ensue, 

Would shut the book, and sit him down and die. 

'Tis not ten years gone 

Since Richard and Northumberland, great friends, 

Did feast together, and in two years after 

Were they at wars : it is but eight years since 

This Percy was the man nearest my soul. 

Who like a brother toiPd in my affairs 

And laid his love and life under my foot, 

Yea, for my sake, even to the eyes of Richard 

Gave him defiance. But which of you was by — 

You, cousin Nevil, as I may remember — 

When Richard, with his eye brimful of tears, 

Then check'd and rated by Northumberland, 

Did speak these words, now proved a prophecy ? 
^ Northumberland, thou ladder by the which 

My cousin Bolingbroke ascends my throne ; ' . . . 
' The time shall come,' thus did he follow it, 
^The time will come, that foul sin, gathering head, 

Shall break into corruption ' : so went on, 

Foretelling this same time's condition, 

And the division of our amity. 

1 // Henry the Fourth : III. i. 45. 



THE PENDULUM OF HISTORY 283 

Northumberland is the one Hnk binding the scattered rebelHons 
into a unity of strength : the hesitation and weakness of North- 
umberland dissolves this unity. Irresistible as a whole, the 
rebels are defeated piecemeal, and the pendulum of fortune is 
seen to have moved to the side of royal power. Passage after 
passage marks the critical position of Northumberland in the 
plot.^ Meanwhile, this man upon whom everything depends is 
exhibited before us in the bosom of his family, distracted by 
doubts. 

Northumberland. 'Tis with my mind 

As with the tide swell'd up unto his height, 
That makes a still-stand, running neither way : 
Fain would I go to meet the archbishop, 
But many thousand reasons hold me back. 
I will resolve for Scotland. ^ 

The temporising policy of Northumberland paralyses his allies; 
one after another the separated forces of revolt are wiped out, 
until Westmoreland can say to the King in his palace — 

There is not now a rebel's sword unsheath'd. 

Fortune has swung to the full height of exaltation for the king; 
in an instant it swings back again, for the shock of good news 
brings on apoplexy. 

King. And wherefore should these good news make me sick? 
Will Fortune never come with both hands full, 
But write her fair words still in foulest letters? 
She either gives a stomach and no food ; 
Such are the poor, in health ; or else a feast, 
And takes away the stomach ; such are the rich, 
That have abundance and enjoy it not. 
I should rejoice now at this happy news ; 
And now my sight fails, and my brain is giddy : 
O me! come near me ; now I am much ill. 

1 E.g. I Henry the Fourth : II. iii. init.; IV. i. 13-85; IV. iv, from 13; II Henry 
the Fourth : I. i. 163; I. iii, from 10. 
a // Henry the Fourth : II. iii. 62. 



284 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

From the triumphant scene of his long-delayed success the King 
is carried to die. 

We now reach, in the play of Henry the Fifths one of those 
breaks in the mutations of fortune, which, we have seen, are an 
essential feature in the movement of history as conceived by 
Shakespeare. The starting-point for the oscillation between royal 
power and sedition was found in the divinity of kingship : the 
presentation of a kingly personality makes a central stage of rest. 
A fornier chapter of this book has dwelt upon the way in which 
Shakespeare reads into the character of Henry of Monmouth a 
combination of all elements making supreme heroism ; under 
heroic rule like this resistance to royal power appears only to 
display its own weakness. Before this we have seen sedition 
taking local colour from all parts of the king's dominions : we 
have had Glendower and Welsh, Douglas and Scotch, the Percies 
and English revolt; in King John we have heard of rebels in 
Ireland. But it is a distinctive note in the French war of Henry 
the Fifth that all the component elements of Great Britain are 
represented ; one hne of action in the underplot is made by 
English officers and men led by Gower, Welsh officers led 
by Fluellen, Scotch by Jamy, Irish by MacMorris, all blending 
together into a pageant of miUtary life. 

We pass on, and the swing of fortune is resumed, and main- 
tained through the three parts of He7iry the Sixth. Rest is still 
used as a contrast to motion, but in a different way ; instead of 
intervals of repose, making breathing spaces in a long-sustained 
movement of alternation, we here have the element of rest main- 
tained continuously as a background, against which the rising and 
falling vicissitudes stand out in relief. This element of repose is 
the King himself. We have had divinity of kingship and kingly 
personahty : in the present case we have unkingly kingship. The 
spirit of Henry is the devout ideal of the quiet cloister, ever in 
antagonism with the turmoil of pubHc life. In a lonely spot 
adjoining a battlefield of civil war, on which son is killing father 
and father son, Henry meditates.^ — 

1/// Henry the Sixth : II. v. 20. 



THE PENDULUM OF HISTORY 285 

O God ! methinks it were a happy life, 
To be no better than a homely swain ; 
To sit upon a hill, as I do now, 
To carve out dials quaintly, point by point, 
Thereby to see the minutes how they run, 
How many make the hour full complete; 
How many hours bring about the day ; 
How many days will finish up the year; 
How many years a mortal man may live. 
When this is known, then to divide the times : 
So many hours must I tend my flock ; 
So many hours must I take my rest ; 
So many hours must I contemplate ; 
So many hours must I sport myself; 
So many days my ewes have been with young ; 
So many days ere the poor fools will ean ; 
So many years ere I shall shear the fleece : 
So minutes, hours, days, months, and years, 
Pass'd over to the end they were created. 
Would bring white hairs unto a quiet grave. 

The personality of Henry is before us through three plays, symbol 
of this reposeful ideal : meanwhile, those who rule in his name, but 
not in his spirit, are giving scope for the ceaseless mutations of 
fortune. 

The first play opens with the French war : if we read continu- 
ously the scenes portraying this war we may almost mark the 
margin of the book with the crescendo and decrescendo of 
musical score, so regularly and rapidly does the pendulum swing 
between English success and failure. The funeral of Henry the 
Fifth is disturbed by messengers following on one another's 
heels with tidings of ill : Guienne, Champagne, Rheims, Orleans, 
Paris, all lost ; the Dauphin crowned in Rheims, the Bastard of 
Orleans, the Dukes of Anjou and Alengon supporting his cause ; 
and worse still, the stout Talbot treacherously deserted and taken 
prisoner. As the scene shifts to the seat of war the worst for 
England seems reahsed : Charles and his French lords feel that 
one more effort will raise the siege of Orleans. — 



286 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

Remaineth none but mad-brain'd Salisbury ; 
And he may well in fretting spend his gall, 
Nor men nor money hath he to make war. 

The battle is essayed, and at once the sway of fortune has changed 
in favour of England : the Dauphin is in full retreat, cursing his 
dastard soldiers, while Salisbury now is called a desperate homicide 
fighting as if weary of Ufe ; the French say the English army is 
made up of Samsons and GoUases, that — 

Their arms are set like clocks, still to strike on. 

But immediately fortune turns again : the hopes of the enemy 
rise as news comes of the Holy Maid, raised up by miraculous 
vision to drive the English from France. La Pucelle appears, 
easily foils the simple devices tried to test her ; and French victory 
is felt to be assured. 

Glory is like a circle in the water, 

Which never ceaseth to enlarge itself 

Till by broad spreading it disperse to nought. 

With Henry's death the English circle ends ; 

Dispersed are the glories it included. 

But, to balance this, the English side receives a most valuable 
accession : in the trenches round Orleans, Salisbury welcomes 
Talbot, ransomed from captivity after innumerable adventures. 
As the tale of adventure is being told, fickle fortune is veering : a 
gun carefully trained to cover the turret where the two warriors are 
speaking is touched at the right moment by the gunner's boy, 
and — woe for England ! — the noble Salisbury is shattered to 
pieces. There is a cry that La Pucelle is approaching : the turns 
of fate are quick : in the valiant agony of witnessing the fall of 
Salisbury, Talbot drives the Dauphin and his French forces in 
headlong flight ; in another moment it is Talbot who is driven 
before the French Maid, the old warrior bursting with spleen, 
giddy with whirling thoughts, as his forces give ground before 
a woman; all is vain, the French colours wave on the walls of 



THE PENDULUM OF HISTORY 287 

Orleans. Night settles down on the French rejoicings, to quench 
them in humiliation. The English regent and his ally of Burgundy 
approach with scaHng ladders ; the cry of ' St. George ' and 
' a Talbot ' is heard, and the French " leap over the walls in their 
shirts " ; as the French leaders stand half dressed, with bundles of 
clothes under their arms, mixing mutual recriminations with plans 
of rallying, a single unseen EngUshman raises the cry of * Talbot,' 
and scatters them in flight, their clothes left behind as spoils for the 
humorous soldier. Another turn of Fortune ; this time the fickle 
dame wears the guise of courtesy. Enghsh hopes seem to decline 
as the irresistible Talbot is enticed into the castle of the Countess 
of Auvergne, on a pretext of hospitable admiration ; the admiration 
is dropped as soon as her porter enters with the keys of the castle, 
and the hostess taunts Talbot with being her prisoner. 

Long time thy shadow had been thrall to me, 
For in my gallery thy picture hangs : 
But now the substance shall endure the like, 
And I will chain these legs and arms of thine. 

The hopes of England have risen again as we hear the ringing 
laugh of the great prisoner. 

No, no, I am but shadow of myself: 

You are deceived, my substance is not here ; 

For what you see is but the smallest part 

And least proportion of humanity : 

I tell you, madam, were the whole frame here, 

It is of such a spacious lofty pitch, 

Your roof were not sufficient to contain 't. 

Talbot winds his horn, and from outside is heard the drum and 
thunder of artillery : the captor is at the captive's mercy. With 
the scene shifted to Rouen, the alternation of fate goes on. The 
English lose Rouen, deceived by La Pucelle's picturesque strata- 
gem of warriors disguised as market men with their sacks ; the 
English recover Rouen the same day, with the more than pictu- 
resque incident of the regent Bedford, at point of death, remaining 



288 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

on the scene in his chair, until English victory gives him leisure 
to die. One more mutation, in favour of France : policy is tried 
where force has failed, and, as the Enghsh forces march along in 
full strength, their indispensable ally of Burgundy is detached, and 
subjected to the inspired eloquence of the Holy Maid. He is 
bewitched, relents, is vanquished, will sever himself from Talbot, 
and transfer his force to the opposite scale : the third act ends 
with the swing of the pendulum wholly to the side of Enghsh 
loss. 

The fourth act is a parenthesis in the general movement of 
alternation. The present play has for its main interest the French 
war, the play which follows, English sedition : these are re- 
spectively the fields in which the pendulum of movement mani- 
fests itself. This fourth act has the function of linking these two 
things, war and sedition, into one. Single scenes scattered through 
the series of war pictures have displayed the factious rivalry among 
the English nobles — Gloucester against Winchester, white rose 
of York against red rose of Lancaster. In the fourth act the boy 
King, in vain effort of reconcihation, takes the unfortunate step of 
himself putting on the red rose of Somerset, while he appoints the 
rival Duke of York regent of France, with Somerset to support 
him. The consequences may be foreseen. Talbot in desperate 
straits at Bourdeaux appeals for succour : York lingers to lay the 
blame on Somerset, Somerset on York. What help is secured 
comes too late : the siege of Bourdeaux becomes the piteous 
tragedy of the two Talbots, aged father and young son, clasped 
together in the arms of death. 

It remains for the fifth act to present, most dramatically, the 
final alternation of fortune in the war between England and 
France. The scene has shifted to Anglers ; outside its walls battle 
is raging, and it seems to be in favour of England. The Holy 
Maid betakes herself to her magic. 

Now help, ye charming spells and periapts ; 
And ye choice spirits that admonish me, 
And give me signs of future accidents. 



THE PENDULUM OF HISTORY 289 

Fiends appear. She makes her appeal : they walk and speak 
not. She offers to lop off a member of her body : they hang their 
heads. She offers her body itself in payment of their aid : 
they shake their heads. Then she bids them take her soul, if 
only the French may foil the Enghsh : the Fiends vanish, and 
La Pucelle gives up hope. She is soon taken prisoner, and the 
fortunes of England have risen above the power of sorcery and 
miracle. But in the very same battle another woman is taken 
prisoner by the Enghsh ; the seeming success in reality is fraught 
with ruin. The prisoner is the Princess Margaret of Anjou, 
whose beauty casts upon her captor Suffolk a spell that wrecks 
his hfe ; the princess is reserved as queen for Henry, but — by 
strange reversal of marriage customs — a price is to be paid for 
her : the price is nothing less than the counties of Anjou and 
Maine, keys of Normandy. It is a bargain of infatuation : grizzled 
warriors weep that the dominion of England in France is irre- 
trievably lost. 

In the second part of Kmg Henry the Sixth sedition makes the 
matter of the plot : in the alternate triumphs of hostile factions 
the regular historic movement is to be recognised. Margaret has 
become a force in England; Suffolk and Winchester support her, 
while others rally around the good Gloucester, protector of the 
realm. At first the sway of fate is all in favour of the Queen and 
her party. Gloucester is struck at through his wife ; the duchess 
is insulted at court, and is caught by spies in secret stances of 
magic. Gloucester is reHeved of his protectorate, and accusations 
are pressed against the retiring official. He is committed to the 
custody of his enemies ; they are led on by factious hate to con- 
trive murder. In an instant the pendulum swings back : through 
a series of picturesque incidents we have the wave of revulsion 
spreading high and low. Winchester dies in impenitent frenzy, 
raving of poison and murder. The King shudders at the tight of 
his lovely Queen, and, strengthened by the riots of the indignant 
commons, banishes Suffolk ; in his banishment he is taken by 
pirates, and recognised. — 



290 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

' Whitmore. The Duke of Suffolk, muffled up in rags ! 
Suffolk. Ay, but these rags are no part of the duke : 

Jove sometime went disguised, and why not I? 
Captain. But Jove was never slain, as thou shalt be. 

Sedition again appears ; but its form is entirely changed — it is 
the grotesque popular rising of Jack Cade, half rude fun, half 
reckless bloodshed. Its leaders are Dick Butcher, Smith the 
Weaver, a Sawyer, a Tanner; its charter — 

There shall be in England seven halfpenny loaves sold for a 
penny ; the three-hooped pot shall have ten hoops ; and I will 
make it felony to drink small beer : all the realm shall be in 
common. 

But the flood of rascahty is irresistible in its flow : ordinary forces 
of the king, noble warriors, are in turn overwhelmed ; the tide has 
reached Blackheath, Southwark, London Bridge, Cannon Street, 
Smithfield. Even the proud Buckingham and Clifford have to 
approach the rebels as ambassadors from the King. But this is 
the sudden turn of the tide : as the ambassadors harangue and 
Cade answers, the mob shout alternately for King and for Cade. 

Cade. Was ever feather so lightly blown to and fro as this 
multitude? ... I see them lay their heads together to sur- 
prise me. . . . My sword make way for me, for here is no 
staying. 

The tide of sedition has ebbed, the mob has soon vanished, and 
Jack Cade's head is presently brought in triumph to the King. 

The fifth act makes a point of transition to that which is to be 
the final phase of all this dramatised history, and the new region 
in which the oscillations of fortune are to be traced. It merely 
brings to a climax what has run as a side issue through the two 
dramas, — the rising claims of the House of York. At first ^ it 
was but a heated dispute of noble friends in the Temple-garden ; 

1 / Henry the Sixth ; II. iv. 



THE PENDULUM OF HISTORY 29 1 

plain Richard Plantagenet has insisted, against Somerset, upon a 
point of family honour. 

Plantagenet. Since you are tongue-tied and so loath to speak, 
In dumb significants proclaim your thoughts : 
Let him that is a true-born gentleman, 
And stands upon the honour of his birth, 
If he suppose that I have pleaded truth. 
From off this brier pluck a white rose with me. 

Somerset. Let him that is no coward nor no flatterer. 
But dare maintain the party of the truth. 
Pluck a red rose from off this thorn with me. 

At the end of this famous scene Warwick makes prophecy : 

Warwick. This brawl to-day, 

Grown to this faction in the Temple-garden, 
Shall send between the red rose and the white 
A thousand souls to death and deadly night. 

So far the question is only whether Richard Plantagenet is 
tainted by his father's treason ; in the next scene,^ conference 
with the dying Mortimer stretches the claim, not to a dukedom 
of York, but to the throne of England. As a next step,^ both the 
main factions agree in a bill for restoring Richard Plantagenet, 
and the King creates him Duke of York. In the second play, his 
secret ambitions become public property : an armourer is accused 
by his apprentice of saying that York is rightful heir to the 
throne ; York may indignantly denounce the traitor, but hence- 
forth he is a marked man.^ He is forced forward in his ambition, 
gathers friends round him, and to these unfolds his claim, win- 
ning powerful support."* His foes, upon an outbreak of rebellion 
in Ireland, combine to send York into safe obscurity on pretext of 
service against the rebels.^ York sees his chance. — 

1 / Henry the Sixth : II. v. 8 // Henry the Sixth : I. Hi. 30, 180-22S1 

2 / Henry the Sixth : III. i, from 149. * // Henry the Sixth : IL ii. 

^H Henry the Sixth .■ III. i, from 282. 



292 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

'Twas men I lacked, and you will give them me : 

I take it kindly ; yet be well assured 

You put sharp weapons in a madman's hands. 

York returns from Ireland with an army at his back ; he gradually 
throws off the disguise, and puts forward pretensions to the crown.^ 
There is a fresh precipitation of factious England into new com- 
binations ; the battle of St. Alban's is a trial of strength, and York 
at least holds his own. Thus we pass to the new phase of our 
history ; it is no more a case of sedition, but of armies and the 
battlefield ; the pendulum of fortune is to sway between York and 
Lancaster in the campaigns that make up the Wars of the Roses. 
At the outset^ the White Rose is seen in the ascendant: the 
Yorkists have seized the palace, and King Henry, to save his very 
Parliament house from being a shambles, weakly makes compro- 
mise, granting the succession to his rival if his own reign may be 
undisturbed. Revulsion of feeling against a father who thus dis- 
inherits his son throws moral force to the side of the Lancastrian 
queen ; the Red Rose is victorious at Wakefield ; the Duke of 
York is taken prisoner, is mocked with a paper crown, while the 
inhuman Margaret flourishes in his face a napkin dyed with the 
blood of the tender son of York, whom Clifford has just assassi- 
nated. Fate, as if in horror of such bloodthirsty passion, swings 
to the other side : Towton field knows many mutations, but in the 
end the Lancastrians are routed, butcher Clifford has fallen and 
his corpse is mocked by the foe ; finally King Henry is passively 
taken prisoner by two foresters, who, for all their simplicity, weigh 
more in the scales of war than the peaceful King. When the 
Duke of York is seated triumphantly on the throne with the Lan- 
castrian rivals in exile, prosperity makes him wanton : he insists 
upon a mesalliance which insults his party, his own brother 
Clarence, and Warwick the main bulwark of his power, passing 
over to the enemy ; the downward sway of Yorkist fortune con- 

1 II Henry the Sixth, from V. i. 

2 For references see scheme in Appendix, below, pages 368-369. 



THE PENDULUM OF HISTORY 293 

tinues into the war which breaks out anew, and its first incident is 
an inglorious surprise of Edward's camp, the King being captured 
in his gown. The oscillations of fate now become more rapid. 
Almost immediately the star of York is in the ascendant ; what 
surprise lately did stratagem now undoes ; and King Edward 
escapes, carrying his warder with him. Again : the action dis- 
plays a happy hour for the Lancastrians ; their King is seen released 
from captivity, making Clarence and Warwick the agents of his 
rule. In another moment we have King Henry recaptured in his 
palace j the flowing tide is with the Yorkists, and in rapid succes- 
sion we have the double desertion of Clarence, the death of War- 
wick, the fatal battles of Barnet and Tewkesbury, the assassination 
of the Prince of Wales and of the King. 

When we pass to the play entitled Richard the Third, the Wars 
of the Roses seem to be over ; the truth is rather that they have 
reached their climax — the natural climax of the victors falling out 
over the spoils. The pendulum movement traced through so 
many plays also attains its climax : the dramatic counterpoint 
doubles, and two distinct alternations are perceptible side by side. 
For one, the whole play in its main plot is but a single swing of 
the pendulum ; it is the Rise and Fall of Richard ; villany irresist- 
ible strangely elevates Gloucester to a giddy height, and no less 
mysteriously irresistible nemesis drags him down. While the rise 
of Richard is in progress, the underplot (as we have seen in a 
former chapter)^ is made by the alternate rise and fall of indi- 
viduals composing the faction of York — Clarence, the Queen's 
kindred, Hastings, Buckingham : whoever triumphs over the last 
becomes the victim of the next. And the protracted fall of Rich- 
ard (we have seen) takes the form of tantalising fluctuations of 
hope and despair, as messages pour in from a distance, or delusive 
victory mocks him in the battle itself. That no mode of emphasis 
may be wanting, the passion of the play catches the rhythm of 
alternation : Margaret's curses and Richard's retort unify at the last 
moment the whole war of factions, York made the nemesis upon 
1 Above, pages 41-42. 



294 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

Lancaster, and Lancaster upon York, from generation to genera- 
tion. Only with the death of Richard does the long drawn 
movement reach a position of rest : 

Now civil wars are stoppM ; peace lives again. 

The continuous succession of plays is exhausted ; but there still 
remains the drama of Heriry the Eighth, which criticism loves to 
call the epilogue to Shakespeare's dramatic history of England. 
The suggestion is interesting, for the first note struck by the 
prologue to this play is mutation of fortune ; we are bidden to look 
upon grand personages of history in their pomp and pride, and 
then see — 

How soon this mightiness meets misery. 

Moreover, as we have seen in our discussion of the drama, what 
there is in it of history takes the form of rise and fall ; successive 
stages in the rise of the young beauty, and successive stages in 
the fall of the older wife who must make way for her. But we 
also saw that there was another element of interest in Henry 
the Eighth, different from this. The larger life of history in this 
drama mingles with the more confined life of personality. Four 
personages were made prominent — Buckingham, Katherine, 
Wolsey, Cranmer : these were not treated — like John, Queen 
Margaret, Warwick, CUfford, and the hke — from the outside only, 
as so many pieces on the chess-board of history. The inner life 
of individuality was, for these four personages, fully displayed ; we 
were able to see how that which is a fall in the life without may be 
a rise in the life within, how external elevation may be spiritual 
poverty. The outer hfe of each individual is part of the pageant 
of history ; whether he be small or great, his external career may 
be swung into currents for which he is not responsible, yet which 
he cannot resist. But whoever has awakened to a consciousness 
of a life within has a realm of his own outside the sway of history ; 
for the determination of individual character the individual him- 
self is solely responsible. 



THE PENDULUM OF HISTORY 295 

The pendulum swing of events, the ceaseless oscillation of 
fortune, the alternate rise and fall of the scales in which issues are 
weighed, this — with shadowings of rest for relief or contrast — is 
the law of history, as history is dramatised in Shakespeare. Like 
the colour of the atmosphere — invisible in the air around us, 
showing deep blue as we gaze into the depths of space — this 
pendulum of events is only traceable on the vast scale of national 
history, in which the minutes and hours are reigns and dynasties. 
It is an intelligible principle ; so much of natural history takes the 
form of action and reaction, that it need not seem strange if tem- 
poral history, seen in extenso, should have ebbs and flows of its 
tide. The conception of alternate rise and fall of human institu- 
tions seems in close harmony with the scheme of providential gov- 
ernment that was ' wisdom ' to the Hebrew psalmist : 

He turneth rivers into a wilderness, 

And water springs into a thirsty ground ; 

A fruitful land into a salt desert, 

For the wickedness of them that dwell therein. 

He turneth a wilderness into a pool of water, 

And a dry land into water springs. 

And there he maketh the hungry to dwell, 

That they may prepare a city of habitation ; 

And sow fields, and plant vineyards, 

And get them fruits of increase. 

He blesseth them also, so that they are multiplied greatly; 

And he suffereth not their cattle to decrease. 

Again, they are minished and bowed down 

Through oppression, trouble, and sorrow, 

He poureth contempt upon princes, 

And causeth them to wander in the waste, where there is no way. 

Yet setteth he the needy on high from affliction, 
And maketh him families like a flock. 
The upright shall see it, and be glad ; 
And all iniquity shall stop her mouth. 



296 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

As it appears in Shakespeare, this sway of history is wholly free 
from suggestion of fatalism. Throughout the ten plays there has 
been no hint of malicious destiny mocking strenuous endeavour, 
such as Greek tragedy delighted to display; there has been no 
unnatural interference with the consequences of acts. And the 
epilogue play comes to make impressive the distinction of story 
and history : it is but the outer life, entangled with the lives of 
others, on which the swing of historic movement can exercise even 
the slightest impulse ; the life of inner personality is entirely our 
own. 



XIV 

SUPERNATURAL AGENCY IN THE MORAL WORLD OF 
SHAKESPEARE 

In our survey of the forces of life we commenced with what is 
nearest to us, individual will. We then saw how Shakespearean 
drama indicates the hmitations on personal will ; from within, in 
heredity and character ; from without, in the sway of immediately 
surrounding circumstance. In the preceding chapter we went still 
further afield, and noted how the vast movements of history, only 
perceptible when time is surveyed on a large scale, constitute a 
force, to which individual will may yield or rise superior. In this 
chapter we have to go beyond the bounds of that ordinary course 
of things we call Nature, and inquire as to the Supernatural, how 
far it is one of the forces of life in Shakespearean drama. I do 
not here speak of God, nor of the system of law or providence in 
which his action may be manifested. The question is of super- 
natural agencies : how the system of Shakespeare is related to the 
varied powers, familiar in human tradition, which come between 
the ordinary course of Nature, and the supreme force of Deity. 

It is obvious that from the present point of view two plays of 
Shakespeare stand apart from all the rest, and form a class by 
themselves. In A Midsummer- Nighf s Dream and in The Tem- 
pest, the whole action is permeated by the supernatural. But it is 
clear that these two dramas are in no way pictures of real hfe ; 
they are dramatisations of the supernatural. Fairy existence in 
the one, magic and enchantment in the other, are the hypotheses 
on which the whole story rests. It does not follow that much may 
not be learned from these plays with reference to the moral system 
of Shakespeare ; but they have no bearing upon the question im- 

297 



298 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

mediately before us — the position of supernatural agency in real 
life. 

In the other plays free use seems to be made of what in ordi- 
nary parlance is called the supernatural. In Cymbeline gods and 
goddesses of classical antiquity descend upon the scene. The 
oracle, which was so important in classical drama, makes a pivotal 
point for Winter's Tale^ and has a subordinate place in Cymbeline ; 
although in both these poems the local colour is modern rather 
than ancient. Soothsayers, and innumerable forms of omen, such 
as in antiquity went hand in hand with oracles, are used to a con- 
siderable extent in Shakespeare's Roman plays ; and similar de- 
vices^ appear in some of the plays of Enghsh history. Fiends 
make an appearance in the first part of Henry the Sixth in con- 
nection with the sorcery of La Pucelle ; in Henry the Eighth we 
have a vision of angels. Witches, and the apparitions their spells 
can raise, play a prominent part in the tragedy of Macbeth. And 
ghosts seem to have an important share in the action of the dramas 
of Hamlet, Julius Ccesar, Macbeth, Richard the Third. 

An attempt is often made to get rid of this apparently super- 
natural element in Shakespeare's plays by rationalising it out of 
all real existence; the ghosts and omens (it is said) are but 
hallucinations of those who see or hear them ; Macbeth's witches 
are but a stage symbol for the spirit of temptation. Such sugges- 
tions usually come from criticism that has never frankly accepted 
inductive examination of the literature as the sole ground of the 
discussion ; and the rationalising proposal is dictated by a desire 
to bring Shakespeare into harmony with our own more advanced 
age, that has got rid entirely of oracles and soothsayers, and only 
smiles at a ghost story. But such a line of argument is, even from 
its own point of view, hazardous ; for if a single case of the super- 
natural in Shakespeare is accepted, all chance of his being pre- 
sented as a modern rationalist is gone. Yet, unless violence is to 
be done to every indication of the text, who can explain away the 
Ghost in Hamlet or the Witches in Macbeth ? The Ghost is seen 

1 E.g. Peter of Pomfret in the play of King John, 



SUPERNATURAL AGENCY IN SHAKESPEARE 299 

by different persons at the same time, by the same persons at 
different times ; he makes known circumstances not known before, 
and subsequently confirmed by evidence. If this is not sufficient, 
by what kind of evidence will it ever be possible to substantiate 
objective existence? Similarly, the Witches not only appear to 
Banquo as well as to Macbeth, but they are shown alone, plying the 
ordinary trade of witches ; if their predictions in the first act might 
be guesses, what is to be said of the fourth act, in which their 
apparitions foresee the history of Scotland for centuries and the 
union of the three crowns?^ This is presented as supernatural 
knowledge, and only with supernatural knowledge can the scene 
be reconciled. I am not questioning that some of Shakespeare's 
supernatural phenomena can be explained as hallucinations ; my 
argument is that in every case it must be a question of the evi- 
dence from the details of the play. 

It is indeed not easy to find any criterion upon which we can 
absolutely rely for testing reality in the supernatural agencies 
of Shakespearean drama. It might have been expected that such 
a criterion would be found in the stage-directions, in which a 
dramatist speaks for himself. In Shakespeare there are doubts as 
to the authenticity of the stage-directions. But even if this point 
be waived, we find that what directions there are seem equivocal 
in their bearing on the present issue. The case has already been 
noted ^ of the Banquet Scene in Macbeth, where stage-directions 
declare that the Ghost sits in a particular chair, that it disappears 
and reappears, whereas it is certain in this instance that the appari- 
tion is wholly the creation of Macbeth' s imagination ; here then 
stage-directions are no more than a symbol, assisting us as to 
what Macbeth is supposed to see. A somewhat similar, but much 
more intricate case, is the second Ghost Scene in Hamlet: ^ here 
the opposing evidence is difficult to balance. On the one hand, 
the stage-directions state that the Ghost enters, that it makes exit ; 
more than this, a speech of six lines is represented as spoken by 

1 Macbeth : IV. i. 120-iai. 2 Above, page 260. 

^Hamlet: III. ir. 



300 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

the Ghost. On the other hand, it is made positive that the ap- 
parition is seen and heard by none but Hamlet himself. 

Queen. To whom do you speak this ? 

Hamlet. Do you see nothing there? 

Queen. Nothing at all ; yet all that is I see. 

Hamlet. Nor did you nothing hear? 

Queen. No, nothing but ourselves. 

Hamlet. Why, look you there ! look, how it steals away! 
My father, in his habit as he lived ! 
Look, where he goes, even now, out at the portal ! 

{_Exit Ghost. 

Queen, This is the very coinage of your brain: 
This bodiless creation ecstasy 
Is very cunning in. 

Hamlet. Ecstasy ! 

My pulse, as yours, doth temperately keep time, 
And makes as healthful music : it is not madness 
That I have utter'd : luring me to the test, 
And I the matter will re- word ; which madness 
Would gambol from. 

It is intelligible enough that a man who has once been so shocked, 
as Hamlet had been, by a visit from the unseen world should in 
a future moment of excitement, create the supernatural visitor by 
mental act. And this view receives support from the particular 
form taken by this second apparition ; Hamlet has just been pour- 
ing out his soul in a vivid picture to his mother of the husband 
she had shghted, and the Ghost appears, not the armed warrior 
of the first act, but the subject of Hamlet's description : 

My father, in his habit as he lived. 

On the other hand, it does seem violence of interpretation to 
understand the Ghost's speech of six lines as nothing more than a 
symboHc way of indicating what Hamlet thinks. And yet certain 
considerations favour this view. As in the case of Macbeth,^ it is 
what is uppermost in Hamlet's mind at the moment that would 
1 Compare above, pages 255, 260-262. 



SUPERNATURAL AGENCY IN SHAKESPEARE 301 

thus find expression in the form of hallucination. The spirit in 
which Hamlet goes to the interview with his mother is thus con- 
veyed.^ 

Hamlet. 'Tis now the very witching time of night, 

When churchyards yawn, and hell itself breathes out 
Contagion to this world : now could I drink hot blood, 
And do such bitter business as the day 
Would quake to look on. Soft ! now to my mother. 

heart, lose not thy nature ; let not ever 
The soul of Nero enter this firm bosom : 
Let me be cruel, not unnatural : 

1 will speak daggers to her, but use none. 

He is in a state of violent excitement ; his mind is running upon 
apparitions from the grave and from hell ; two thoughts are strug- 
gling within him — the two thoughts planted in his soul by the 
Ghost Scene of the first act — revenge, and some final tenderness 
to the mother. Now, the speech attributed to the apparition is 
just made up of these two thoughts. 

Hamlet. Do you not come your tardy son to chide. 
That, lapsed in time and passion, lets go by 
The important acting of your dread command? 
O, say ! 

Ghost. Do not forget : this visitation 

Is but to whet thy almost blunted purpose. 
But, look, amazement on thy mother sits : 
O, step between her and her fighting soul : 
Conceit in weakest bodies strongest works : 
Speak to her, Hamlet. 

The first word of the apparition, put into his mouth by Hamlet's 
question, is the revenge ; the second, is the relenting to the 
woman's weakness. And this speech makes the turning-point of 
the scene : of the two ideas contending all along for mastery 
in Hamlet's mind he has hitherto carried out the one ; from this 
point he devotes himself to the other. Real or not real, the 

^Hamlet: III. ii. 406. 



302 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

Ghost gives expression to the mind of Hamlet. Between indica- 
tions so evenly balanced I will not undertake to pronounce. But 
a third alternative is worthy of consideration. Seeing that ghosts 
belong, not to the domain of natural law, but to the unknown 
supernatural, may it be that objective and subjective have no 
application to them? or that they can appear objective and sub- 
jective at the same time? Just as, even within the limits of the 
positive world, there are objective vibrations of air so rapid that 
only some ears, and not all, can catch them, so may it be a quality 
of the supernatural apparition that it has objective existence, yet 
is perceptible, not to all eyes and ears, but only to those of one 
tuned (so to speak) into harmony with the mind of the apparition, 
by crime, or kinship, or mission of revenge ? 

The general drift of these remarks is, that the important question 
in reference to supernatural agencies in Shakespeare is, not their 
objective reahty, but their function in the plot. Does the course of 
the drama indicate that what appears as a manifestation of some- 
thing outside ordinary Nature can exercise influence upon men and 
events ? On the answer to this depends the question whether super- 
natural agency is one of the forces of life in Shakespeare's world. 

On this point it appears to me that three propositions may be 
laid down. First : Supernatural agency in Shakespeare has no 
power to influence events unless by influencing persons. A large 
proportion of the supernatural in these dramas is concerned with 
the indication of future events. The event always agrees with the 
prediction : the knowledge of the future is supernatural. We are 
thus brought to the grand question which has perplexed theology 
for centuries : Does foreknowledge imply predestination ? What- 
ever may be the truth in theology, the practice of Shakespeare is 
unmistakable. The key-note is given by the striking words which 
Banquo addresses to the Witches : 

If you can look into the seeds of time, 

And say which grain will grow and which will not, 

Speak then to me.^ 

1 Macbeth : I. iii. 58. 



SUPERNATURAL AGENCY IN SHAKESPEARE 303 

A power is implied which is superhuman, the power to read the 
future. But the future so read is a future brought about by 
natural causes, by seed and its fructification, and by no other 
power. On this text Shakespeare's whole treatment of the super- 
natural is a comment : there is infallible prediction, there is also a 
rational train of causes and effects bringing about the issue pre- 
dicted. Such foreshadowings as omens, oracles, visions, affect the 
question only negatively ; in these cases we have pure revelation 
of the future, with no suggestion of an agency behind prediction 
or fulfilment. The Ghosts who make the vision of Richard the 
Third point to the morrow ; but there is nothing to imply that 
they can affect the issue of the battle — except by depressing the 
spirits of Richard and raising those of Richmond. But the lead- 
ing illustration of this principle is of course the play of Macbeth. 
Here the Witches make elaborate predictions of the future, all of 
them exactly fulfilled. In each case however Shakespeare has 
enabled us to see a regular succession of natural causes, amply 
sufficient to bring about the result. Macbeth is to be thane of 
Glamis and thane of Cawdor ; he becomes the first by his father's 
death, the second by promotion to the position of the rebel he 
had overcome ; there is no room here for intervention of the 
Witches. Macbeth is told he shall be king : we have had occasion 
to trace the fluctuation of events by which he becomes king, but 
there is no hint of the influence of the Witches, except so far as 
their words may have influenced Macbeth himself in the part he 
plays. The Witches make the double-edged forecast as to 
Banquo, that he shall be lesser than Macbeth and yet greater, that 
he shall get kings though he be none ; all is fulfilled in the 
moment when the father is struck by murderers, and in the dark 
the nimble son escapes ; yet in this attack the Witches do not 
appear, unless it was their words that set Macbeth on to this 
crime. Yet again, there is the dark saying about Birnam Wood 
coming to Dunsinane ; but we know by how natural a train of in- 
cidents the marvel was made a reaHty; no supernatural instiga- 
tion^ but only a happy thought of military stratagem brought it 



304 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

about.^ There was another dark saying, that only the man " not 
born of woman" could slay Macbeth; we are allowed to see how 
the individual to whom alone that description applies receives an 
injury of his own from the tyrant, in addition to the injuries he 
resents on behalf of his country;^ the double motive brings Mac- 
duff naturally to the vengeance, in which, it is easy to understand, 
his passionate power is irresistible. The supernatural agencies 
revealed by Shakespeare stand aloof from the game of life as 
spectators ; as spectators they can see further than the players ; 
but they have no means of affecting the play itself, except so far 
as what they report may influence the minds of the players. 

How far then can supernatural agencies influence persons in the 
drama ? Here a second proposition may be laid down : The 
supernatural has no power over men except by their own consent. 
It may be asked, How does Richard consent to the ghostly visit- 
ants who torment him, or where is there consent to the omens 
which disturb the world of the Roman plays? The answer is, 
that consent is given by deeds as well as by words. Crime is a 
debt : Richard has given his victims' ghosts the hold on him that 
the creditor has on the lingering debtor. The application of the 
principle to the omens in Julius Ccesar is very clear. To the 
world at large these are meaningless ; they come down with a 
weight of influence only on those who in their hearts have ac- 
cepted that to which the omens are pointing. Casca^ pours out 
a description of the heavens in supernatural convulsion; Cicero 
makes answer : 

Why, saw you anything more wonderful ? 

Still more excitedly Casca tells of portents on earth passing beliet ; 
still his interlocutor remarks coolly : 

Indeed, it is a strange-disposed time : 

But men may construe things after their fashion, 

Clean from the purpose of the things themselves. 

1 Macbeth : V. iv. 3 Macbeth : IV. iii, from 159. » Julius Ccesar : I. iii. 



SUPERNATURAL AGENCY IN SHAKESPEARE 305 

In a moment Cassius comes : how does he treat the wild phe- 
nomena on which Casca is so eloquent? 

Cassius. For my part, I have walk'd about the streets, 

Submitting me unto the perilous night, 

And, thus unbraced, Casca, as you see, 

Have bared my bosom to the thunder-stone . . . 

Now could I, Casca, name to thee a man 

Most like this dreadful night, 

That thunders, lightens, open graves, and roars 

As doth the lion in the Capitol, 

A man no mightier than thyself or me 

In personal action, yet prodigious grown 

And fearful, as these strange eruptions are. 
Casca. 'Tis Caesar that you mean. 

Cicero and the innocent see curiosities, where men with con- 
spiracy in their hearts see encouraging omens from heaven. The 
play of Macbeth is again in point. The Witches first meet the 
hero in company with Banquo : Banquo questions in vain, but as 
soon as Macbeth speaks a single word, the predictions flow out.^ 
As we have seen, Macbeth's start explains the difference : he had 
already sworn treason against King Duncan in his heart. The 
second time the Witches exercise their function, it is Macbeth 
who has sought them out, and by the power of curses forced them, 
in spite of their resistance, to speak of the future.^ The prin- 
ciple applies similarly to Hamlet.^ When Bernardo and Marcellus 
first see the Ghost, they fear to question, and the apparition makes 
no communication. When Horatio goes further and addresses 
the strange figure thus — 

What art thou, that usurp'st this time of night, 
Together with that fair and warlike form 
In which the majesty of buried Denmark 
Did sometimes march ? — 

his unfortunate word " usurp'st " impHes a doubt, and the appari- 
tion stalks offended away. On its return, Horatio makes solemn 

1 Macbeth: I. iii. 39-50. 2 Macbeth : III. iv. 132; IV. i. 50. 8 Hamlet: I. i, iy. 
X 



306 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

adjuration ; the apparition seems about to speak, when the sound 
of cock-crow marks the end of night's limitation. Subsequently 
Hamlet himself recognises his father, and implores communica- 
tion of his thought : only then is the revelation fully vouchsafed. 
In each case consent to receive the revelation is implied. All 
this may seem to amount to no more than the popular super- 
stition, that a ghost cannot speak until spoken to. But it is 
striking that the great traditional machinery of the supernatural 
— a celestial and an infernal hierarchy impelling men to good 
and to evil — is absent entirely from Shakespeare's world; the 
only angels who appear signify to Katherine that the victory of 
life is won ; the only fiends are invoked by La Pucelle, and sig- 
nify their powerlessness to help.^ Shakespeare's supernatural 
agencies are what Banquo calls them — instruments of darkness : 
of no significance except in hands that consent to use them. 

We may go yet further in the third of our propositions : The 
influence in Shakespeare of the supernatural on persons is seen to 
emphasise and assist, but never to initiate or alter, a course of 
action. Supernatural power can only — to borrow a Shakespearean 
phrase — marshal men the way that they are going. In Winter's 
Tale Leontes has passionately invoked the oracle as his final court 
of appeal : as soon as it has spoken against him he exclaims : 

There is no truth at all i' the oracle : 

The sessions shall proceed : this is mere falsehood. 

It takes natural events — the report of son and wife's death — to 
turn him from his headlong career. Richard after the Ghost Scene 
declares that shadows have struck more terror to his soul than all the 
forces of the enemy : but he only fights the harder in the morrow's 
battle. As before, it is the plays of Macbeth and Hamlet that 
are the crucial tests of Shakespeare's mode of handUng the super- 
natural. In the former we have a series of shocks, each promising 
to change Macbeth's action, each ending by leaving it where it 
would otherwise have been. The word "Thou shalt be King" 

1 Henry the Eighth : IV. ii ; / Henry the Sixth : V. iii. 



SUPERNATURAL AGENCY IN SHAKESPEARE 307 

(as we have seen^) inflames for the moment Macbeth's former 

purpose of treason ; at the end of the scene he drops the treason ; 

in the next scene — for rational considerations — he falls back to his 

first plans. When the Witches have promised Banquo greatness 

higher than Macbeth's, does not this (it may be asked) impel 

Macbeth to the murder of his rival ? We have his whole feeling 

unveiled in soliloquy.^ ^ . . ^ 

Our fears m Banquo 

Stick deep ; and in his royalty of nature 

Reigns that which would be fearM ; 'tis much he dares ; 

And, to that dauntless temper of his mind. 

He hath a wisdom that doth guide his valour 

To act in safety. There is none but he 

Whose being I do fear : and, under him, 

My genius is rebuked ; as, it is said, 

Mark Antony's was by Caesar. He chid the sisters 

When first they put the name of King upon me, 

And bade them speak to him : then prophet-like 

They hail'd him father to a line of kings. 

Macbeth enlarges on this prediction, making it a motive in his 
design against Banquo, yet only one motive amongst others ; in 
the event itself, as we have seen,^ it is neither this nor the other 
sources of hatred that actually determine the expedition against 
Banquo, but a sudden emergency in which Banquo's presence is a 
special danger. When the apparitions say to Macbeth — 

Beware the thane of Fife : 

he instantly answers — 

Thou has harp'd my fear aright. 

Does not the oracle about Birnam Wood affect Macbeth's action, 
by leading him to shut himself up in Dunsinane Castle ? Appar- 
ently it does ; but Macbeth's description of that fortress — 

Our castle's strength 
Will laugh a siege to scorn : here let them lie 
Till famine and the ague eat them up — 

1 Above, pages 251-252. 2 Macbeth : III. i. 49. 3 Above, pages 258-259. 



308 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

suggests that in any case this would have been the position in 
which he would have awaited an invading army. The promise of 
safety against all born of women might have been expected to set 
Macbeth's mind at ease ; on the contrary, he surrounds himself 
with just the same reign of terror that other tryants use who have 
no supernatural backing. 

The play of Hamlet tests our third principle more severely. 
At first sight it would seem that the intervention of the Ghost 
initiates the whole action of the drama. Yet it is notable, in the 
scene of Hamlet and the Ghost, that when the actual point of the 
revelation is reached — 

The serpent that did sting thy father's life 
Now wears his crown — 

Hamlet instantly interjects — 

O my prophetic soul ! 
My uncle ! 

Hamlet's own mind had anticipated the supernatural revelation. 
This throws light on his suspicion of " foul play," on his still earUer 
expression of the weariness of all life, which at the time seemed out 
of proportion to surrounding circumstances.^ Hamlet's whole 
spirit had been clouded over with a vague sense of horror : the word 
of the Ghost simply precipitates this into a definite thought of 
crime. As the action proceeds our principle receives fresh confir- 
mation. The ghostly visitant with all his dread authority imposes 
on Hamlet a distinct task of vengeance, and Hamlet under this 
influence passionately accepts the commission. As a fact, does 
he act upon it? He soon falls back into sceptical doubt of the 
character of the apparition ; must lay a scheme for confirmation, 
and gets it to the full. Still does he act? He is passionately re- 
solved to act, is ever reproaching himself for delay ; but in actual 
fact the supernatural commission is never fulfilled, and the king is 
slain at last by a sudden impulse of Hamlet, prompted by another 
crime that moment discovered. 

1 Hamlei: I. ii. 256, and whole scene from line 661, 



SUPERNATURAL AGENCY IN SHAKESPEARE 309 

Thus slight is the degree of influence Shakespeare admits for 
supernatural manifestations : they cannot deflect men from a course 
of action, they can but give this a touch of impetus. The popular 
feeUng is that communications from the unseen world, if such 
things can be, must be most powerful motives in human action. 
Powerful such supernatural interference would be in disturbing 
the imagination and the emotions ; but it is the regular order of 
natural influences which alone can govern action. Shakespeare's 
treatment of the supernatural is but a comment on the text : If 
they hear not Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be 
persuaded though one rose from the dead. 

One doubt remains : if so little is permitted to supernatural 
agency, was it worth while to introduce it at all? In reaUty, the 
function of the supernatural in Shakespeare is most important; 
but it is a function addressed, not to the persons in the story, but 
to the spectator of the drama. Shakespeare inherits from ancient 
literature the whole conception of Destiny. This Destiny found 
expression in the Classical Drama chiefly in the form of the 
* oracular action ' : a mysterious oracle of the future is gradually 
cleared up in meaning as it is gradually fulfilled. Shakespeare 
retains enough of the supernatural to make possible this oracular 
action in a plot, but rejects the idea of Destiny as a force control- 
ling events. All that is necessary for the dramatic eff'ect is 
foreknowledge. Even in sober prose a succession of commonplace 
incidents can be vividly interesting when, at the end, the historian 
brings out the principle underlying the incidents. Drama must go 
beyond history, and borrows enough of the supernatural to make 
the future issues send a flash-Hght into the events while still in 
progress. Seen in this light of a known future, the course of 
events, though natural and regular, is imbued with some strange 
colour. There is the colour of mystery. Birnam Wood moving 
to Dunsinane Castle : how is it possible? Curiosity is prolonged 
until, in the most unexpected yet intelligible action of an army 
knowing nothing of the prediction, the impossible has become an 
accomplished fact. Or, there is the colour of irony, a tinge of 



310 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

mockery cast over a succession of events. The supernatural has 
proclaimed that Macbeth shall be king. But to this kingship, not 
in itself improbable, we the spectators see a formidable obstacle 
arise — the proclamation of an heir apparent ; when we further see 
that this proclamation leads Macbeth to take up again the treason 
he had dropped, when the obstacle in the way of the prediction is 
thus converted into a step toward its fulfilment, we seem to catch 
a spirit of mockery in the natural course of history. Again and 
again the effect is repeated. Duncan's son and heir has escaped 
when his father is murdered, but this flight of the son diverts 
pubhc suspicion from Macbeth to himself, and Macbeth is pro- 
claimed king. Macbeth is supernaturally guaranteed against all 
not born of women, yet is bidden beware the thane of Fife. As 
an extra precaution Macbeth sends out to destroy this thane and 
his whole family. We the spectators are allowed to see the thane 
of Fife — the man not born of woman — just about to give up his 
vengeance and quit his country, when the news of the raid, that 
destroyed all his family but missed himself, brings him back to the 
mission which none can accomplish but himself.^ Every single 
detail is rational and intelHgible : but in the light of the predicted 
future the succession of details seems to be a mocking conspiracy. 
To sum up. Supernatural agency has a place in the world of 
Shakespeare. Among the forces of Hfe, it has no power except 
to accentuate what already exists; but it has great power to 
illuminate life for those who are Hfe's spectators. To express a 
principle of drama in language of the theatre : On the stage of 
human Hfe man is the only actor; to supernatural agency it is 
given to manoeuvre the footlights. 

1 Macbeth : IV. iii, from iii. 



XV 

MORAL ACCIDENT AND OVERRULING PROVIDENCE 

In an earlier chapter of this book we have seen that accident is 
to be reckoned among the things that determine issues in human 
life. We saw the story of Romeo and Juliet as permeated with 
the accidental ; its great turning-point — the friar messenger 
stopped at the door of the infected house — is a piece of pure 
chance that is efficient cause of a triple tragedy. Similar cases 
abound in other plays. In The Comedy of Errors the maze of 
cross purposes follows by natural sequence from the original situa- 
tion, and might well bring the various parties concerned to the 
priory ; but it is an accident that they appear just as the proces- 
sion of ^geon to his execution is passing ; five minutes difference 
either way would have made the comedy into a tragedy. In 
Much Ado about Nothing the natural thing for the Watch to do 
is, not to arrest prisoners, but to " go sit here on the church-bench 
till two, and then to bed." By accident they overhear a conversa- 
tion they do not understand, and arrest an important personage 
without knowing it, taking him for an accompHce of the thief 
Deformed ; then accident is multiplied into accident as, when 
they bring their prisoner before the governor, Leonato's patience 
gives out, and he devolves the examination, just before he would 
have heard what would have saved his own daughter from public 
shame. The Outlaws in The Two Gentlemen of Verona are not 
a blockading force who stop all travellers leaving Milan ; yet they 
happen to stop, first Valentine, then in succession all the person- 
ages associated with his story, whose presence upon one and the 
same spot is the only thing necessary to resolve a complicated 
situation. And a play like Cymbeline has a vein of accident run- 

3" 



312 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

ning right through it : that Imogen in her wanderings should find 
the cave where her lost brothers live, that the poison, given 
as a precious drug to Pisanio, should be transferred innocently 
to his mistress and tasted when she is alone in the cave, that 
she should be buried just where the march of the Roman army 
should encounter her on waking from her trance — these and the 
like make a chain of coincidences, not of cause and effect, and 
assist us to realise how much in life of the actual rests upon the 
casual. 

It need cause no difficulty that the word ' accident ' as here 
used admits of no precise definition. We are reminded of the 
old logical Fallacy of the Sorites, which would fain question the 
existence of a heap of corn, on the ground that no one could 
determine how many ears of corn would have to be removed before 
it ceased to be a heap. It is not by any amount of the unforeseen 
and unexpected, less or more, that an event is made into an acci- 
dent. Life is full of the unexpected ; a man who has no resource 
to meet what has not been foreseen lacks an important part of the 
equipment of life, and must expect to suffer accordingly. I have 
ventured to use the term * moral accident.' In the external uni- 
verse we may make it a postulate that everything shall be deemed 
to have a cause ; the moral world, on the contrary, concerns in- 
dividual fives, and there must be many things determining the fate 
of an individual which are nevertheless entirely outside his control, 
which appear therefore in his moral field as causeless. It is thus 
not any analytic quafity of the circumstance itself, but some rela- 
tion between circumstances and personality, that makes the basis 
of moral accident. We must not call the arrival of the Players in 
Hamlet an accident ; true, he was not expecting them, but their 
coming was a natural part of court life ; if they had not appeared, 
some other device would have been used by the prince to make 
his test of the King. It is otherwise with the incident of the 
Pirates in the same play. Possibly the marine insurance of the 
times would recognise piracy among its risks ; but that pirates 
should attack this particular ship, that in boarding Hamlet should 



MORAL ACCIDENT AND OVERRULING PROVIDENCE 313 

be the only man borne off, that this should upset entirely the well- 
laid plan of the King and alter Hamlet's whole future — here is 
the combination of fateful circumstances making a moral accident. 
It is instructive to consider in this light the slaying of Polonius. 
From Hamlet's point of view there is in this nothing accidental ; 
it is just in accordance with his character to strike while the iron 
is hot, and to be benumbed by the time of cooHng. But from the 
standpoint of Polonius this small piece of harmless fussiness setting 
in motion such a ponderous force of reaction goes beyond the 
bounds of cause and effect, and sinks into the accidental. Thus 
the same incident may be a moral accident to one of the persons 
concerned in it, not to another. 

Shakespeare's most elaborate treatment of accident is in The 
Merchant of Venice, But in approaching this masterpiece it is 
necessary to protest against the confusion introduced into its 
analysis by modern attempts to clear Shakespeare from the charge 
of intolerance. We have grown ashamed of the spirit of per- 
secution with which mediaeval Christianity visited a people in 
some respects — notably in finance — representing a higher civil- 
isation than its own. Attempt is made to suggest that Shake- 
speare was above this. Stress is laid upon such passages as 
this. 

Shylock. Signior Antonio, many a time and oft 
In the Rialto you have rated me 
About my moneys and my usances : 
Still have I borne it with a patient shrug, 
For sufferance is the badge of all our tribe. 
You call me misbeliever, cut-throat dog, 
And spit upon my Jewish gaberdine, 
And all for use of that which is mine own. 
Well then, it now appears you need my help : 
Go to, then ; you come to me, and you say 
< Shylock, we would have moneys : ' you say so ; 
You, that did void your rheum upon my beard 
And foot me as you spurn a stranger cur 
Over your threshold : moneys is your suit. . . . 



314 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

Antonio. I am as like to call thee so again, 

To spit on thee again, to spurn thee too. 

If thou wilt lend this money, lend it not 

As to thy friends ; for when did friendship take 

A breed for barren metal of his friend? 

But lend it rather to thine enemy, 

Who, if he break, thou mayst with better face 

Exact the penalty. 

The suggestion is that Shakespeare is enlisting sympathy for the 
oppressed Jews; that the arrogant intolerance of Antonio is the 
error on which the peril of his life is soon to come down as a judg- 
ment. I should be only too glad on this point to be convinced ; 
but I am bound to say that there appears to me not a shred of 
support in the whole play for this interpretation. Antonio is rep- 
resented as the most ideal of characters, and his intolerance is 
part of his perfection — an uncompromising hatred of what (ac- 
cording to the spirit of the times) ought to be hated. When the 
Christian merchant is brought low, neither by himself nor by others 
is there any recognition of rebuked pride ; on the contrary, it is 
as a martyr that Antonio suffers. 

Antonio. He seeks my life ; his reason well I know : 
I oft delivered from his forfeitures 
Many that have at times made moan to me ; 
Therefore he hates me. 

When Antonio has triumphed, he couples his ' mercy ' to Shylock 
with the condition that Shylock shall become a Christian, which 
the court confirms as if it were a matter of course. All this is in 
full accord with the mediaeval feud of Jew and Christian. It is 
true that, in the passage quoted above and in other passages, 
sympathy is being enlisted with the wrongs of Shylock; but for 
what purpose? The traditional Story of the Pound of Flesh in- 
volves a malice so hideously inhuman that it becomes difficult to 
conceive ; the dramatist emphasises the wrongs done to Shylock 
as so many incentives to revenge, helping to make the particular 



MORAL ACCIDENT AND OVERRULING PROVIDENCE 315 

revenge taken less incredible. Of course, it is always right to 
sympathise with trouble and to be indignant at the sight of wrong ; 
but sympathy should not be confused with partisanship. It may 
be well to drop a tear over Shylock staggering dazed out of the 
court to go to his lonely home ; but it should not be forgotten 
that even this is a slighter ruin than the fate which, only a few 
minutes before, Shylock was clamoring to inflict upon his adver- 
sary. The sentimentalism that would make Shylock the real hero 
of The Merchajit of Venice savours of the little child's remark on 
the famous painting of the martyrs cast to lions — that there was 
one poor little lion that had not got a martyr. 

With this prejudice cleared out of the way, we can do justice to 
the elaborate plot of the play.-^ In the main story we have, not 
simply a Christian and a Jew, but a supremely noble Christian and 
a supremely base Jew. Antonio is a combination of dignified 
strength with almost womanly tenderness towards his young friend 
Bassanio ; all in the play feel the greatness of this character, not 
the least of them the incomparable Portia. Shylock is — what 
the traditional story requires — a monster of cruelty and greed in 
his public life ; in private, we have his daughter's authority for it 
that his house is a hell.^ Yet the course of events is such that this 
supremely noble Christian is helplessly at the mercy of the base 
Jew ; and how has it been brought about ? By the most extreme 
example of the accidental ever imagined in fiction. It would have 
been a remarkable accident if all Antonio's ships had been wrecked, 
so vast is his enterprise, and so prudent is he in distributing risks. 
But as a fact, not a single ship miscarries : yet the merchant him- 
self, his creditors, his friends, the business world, all act upon the be- 
lief that all the ventures are lost, and this in a matter of bankruptcy 
and of life and death. If an accidental occurrence seems almost 
too slight a motive for dramatic action, how infinitely slight and 

1 Compare the scheme of the play in the Appendix below, page 347. The 
Merchant of Venice is discussed in detail in Chapters I to III of my Shakespeare 
as a Dramatic Artist. 

2 Merchant of Venice : II. iii. 2. 



3l6 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

nebulous must seem a concatenation of false rumours of accident. 
But all this is only half the story. In the other half the wheel 
goes round, and it is the Jew who is helpless before his Christian 
adversary : and how has this come to pass ? Shakespeare keeps 
up the traditional story, which overthrows the bond because it 
contains no provision for shedding of blood ; but he puts this plea 
in the mouth of a girl. The real legal plea is added afterwards, 
common sense coming to buttress up the picturesque : Portia has 
consulted with the learned Bellario, who supplies her with the fact 
that there is a statute making Shylock's proposal of the bond a 
capital offence.^ The extraordinary thing is that neither Antonio 
and his well-paid advisers, nor the Jews to whom the law meant so 
much, nor the court of Venice which seems to have taken counsel's 
opinion on its own account,^ should have known of this Statute of 
Aliens, dug out of the dust heap of forgotten legislation by a sin- 
gle exceptional pundit. The reversal of the action, as well as the 
earlier phase of it, rests upon a hair's-breadth chance. The whole 
story takes unity as the exhibition, in twofold form, of character 
wholly under the dominion of accident. 

With this story of the Jew the plot of The Merchant of Venice 
interweaves the story of the Caskets. A father with a vast fortune 
and a precious daughter to dispose of rests the possession of both 
on a choice between caskets ; for ground of choice there is nothing 
but the three metals and the three mottoes ; each is a precarious 
guide, the combination of the two dissipates precarious indication 
into pure chance. We have thus an elaborately contrived accident 
as the essence of the situation. It has been noted in an earlier 
chapter ^ what ensues : suitors go honestly through trains of 
reasoning in an irrational issue, but the spectator sees how the 
whole character of each suitor determines his choice, making 
Morocco lean to gold, Arragon to desert, the true lover Bassanio 
to hazarding in preference to receiving. The problem of the 
accidental has been solved by force of character. And the whole 

'^Merchant of Venice: IV. i, from 347. 2 Merchant of Venice : IV. i. 104. 

8 Above, pages 245-246. 



MORAL ACCIDENT AND OVERRULING PROVIDENCE 31; 

plot of the drama thus balances before our eyes, in parallel move- 
ments : on the one side character at the mercy of accident, on the 
other side accident wholly dominated by character. 

So methodical a treatment of accident as this play affords leads 
us naturally to a further step in our survey of the subject. So 
far we have considered accident only negatively : its recognition 
saves us from seeking to make such principles as retribution 
universal, and so degrading the moral into the mechanical. But 
may it be possible to read a more positive significance into the 
accidental, and give it a more definite place in a moral system? 

The question at once puts us in touch with a venerable specula- 
tion of popular thought. When a modern reader appHes himself 
to the life and literature of Greek antiquity, perhaps nothing im- 
presses him more at first than the wide acceptance of the omen 
and the influence of mantic art. In profundity and subtlety of 
intellect the Greek is at least the equal of the modern mind. Yet 
this wise people is seen, in the regulation of daily life, to give 
anxious attention to things which a modern observer can only 
regard as flimsy puerilities. If a beast is slain for a sacrificial 
feast, the entrails are carefully inspected ; their normal or ab- 
normal appearance, or the kind of sputtering they make in the 
fire, is accepted as indication of good fortune or evil to come. 
The movement of flickering flame is precisely marked ; observa- 
tories are built for studying the zigzag darting of flying birds ; the 
exact itinerary of the wayward lightning flash is a question of im- 
portance ; it makes a difference whether the sudden thunder clap 
was heard on the right side or on the left; a sneeze, a bodily 
convulsion, a chance word of greeting, a stumble over a threshold 
— all these may be ominous of futurity. Now, it will be noted 
that the one element common to all these different kinds of omen 
is the purely accidental nature of the thing observed. Greek 
subtlety has seized upon what is furthest removed from orderly 
habit and regularity of occurrence, and to this it looks for tokens 
from the Supreme. For that portion of the universe which mani- 
fests itself in the form of law is limited by law ; if the higher will 



3l8 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

is ever to indicate itself it must be by using some machinery that 
is outside the course of law. The philosophy of the omen is that 
accident is the only possible revelation of Destiny. 

A similar conception enters into modern thought, though of 
course it finds very different degrees of acceptance in different 
minds. A man sets out for the train by which he goes every day 
to the city ; he turns back because he has forgotten his pocket- 
handkerchief ; he thereby misses his train by just half a minute ; 
the train is wrecked and many are killed. Instantly the man is 
conscious of a supreme will in the universe, and that it has inter- 
fered for his protection. Suppose that the individual in question 
had been possessed of a peculiar sensitiveness to magnetic condi- 
tions of the atmosphere, that on this particular morning the air 
struck him as in an abnormal condition favorable to snapping of 
axles or rails, and that on this account he postponed his journey : 
then the subsequent wreck would have raised no thoughts in the 
man's mind beyond the beauty of the science of magnetics. It 
was the purely accidental character of what occurred — the trifle 
of a forgotten handkerchief saving a life — that kindled the con- 
ception of a special providence ; and it was not for the man in the 
excitement of a personal revelation to trouble himself with the 
question of the other people who remembered their handkerchiefs 
and were killed. 

In ancient and modern thought alike then there is at least 
a tendency to associate accident with supreme providence ; not 
indeed the providence of everyday life, which reveals itself in 
the form of regular and orderly law, but what may be called Over- 
ruling Providence — the supreme power of the universe acting 
outside law. The idea of course is not that all apparent accidents 
are so to be interpreted ; but that, if providential power other 
than regular law is to act at all, it is only in the form of the acci- 
dental that it can manifest itself. 

Shakespeare's great treatment of this particular aspect of his 
moral system is the play of Hamlet. In this perplexing and diffi- 
cult plot we have at all events the assistance of an interpretation 



MORAL ACCIDENT AND OVERRULING PROVIDENCE 3 19 

coming from the poem itself. Horatio, Hamlet's confidant all 
through, is deputed by the dying prince to read the lesson of the 
whole story. We never hear Horatio's explanation; but the sum- 
mary he makes of what he is to say is itself instructive. 

And let me speak to the yet unknowing world 

How these things came about : so shall you hear 

Of carnal, bloody, and unnatural acts. 

Of accidental judgements, casual slaughters, 

Of deaths put on by cunning and forced cause, 

And, in this upshot, purposes mistook 

FalPn on the inventors' heads. ^ 

Evidently the association of accident and overruling providence 
is a main thought of Horatio's homily ; and the facts of the play 
fully support this interpretation. 

In the main plot^ of Ha^nlet (as in Cymbeline) we can note a 
system of graded wrong, with appropriate nemesis and pathos ; 
but in each single case there is the intervention of accident. At 
one end of the scale we have the gross crime of the King — mur- 
der of a brother and King to gain the brother's wife and kingdom. 
Eventually due retribution comes from the natural avenger of blood. 
Yet, although the murdered father comes from his grave to stir up 
his son and avenger, Hamlet is seen to hesitate and delay, is for 
ever on the verge of avenging and yet stops short : until accident 
intervenes in the circumstance of the poison prepared by the King 
for Hamlet being tasted by the Queen. Then the full nemesis 
descends : the King has just time to see himself the murderer of 
the woman he loves, and then falls at the hand of his brother's 
avenger. Next, we have the lesser crime of the Queen : yet crime 
we must call it, for the imphcation of the whole story is a guilty 
love while her first husband is yet alive. Nemesis overtakes her, 
as she meets her death from her lover's hand : yet by accident, for 
the death was meant for her son, and — to add pathos to her fall — 

1 Hamlet : V. ii. 390. 

2 Compare the scheme of the play in the Appendix below, page 364. 



320 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

it was anxiety over the position of this well-loved son that made 
the thirst so fatally quenched. We now pass outside crime, to 
what is merely unwisdom. The wrong of Polonius amounts to no 
more than politic intermeddling ; and he meets a meddler's fate 
— yet by accident, a fate intended for another. 

Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool, farewell ! 
I took thee for thy better : take thy fortune ; 
Thou find'st to be too busy is some danger. 

Much the same may be said of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. 

They are not near my conscience ; their defeat 
Does by their own insinuation grow : 
'Tis dangerous when the baser nature comes 
Between the pass and fell incensed points 
Of mighty opposites. 

Their nemesis is to go unconsciously to the doom to which they 
were assisting Hamlet. And it is accident that has so decreed : 
the accident is one of those strange, unaccountable impressions 
that sometimes come upon a man, so that he feels irrational in 
acting on them, and yet in the sequel finds overpowering justifica- 
tion. If it seems to be straining this word accident to extend it so 
far, I can only say that it is Hamlet himself who is responsible for 
the interpretation. With these words he introduces his story of 
the feeling which prompted him to open the sealed packet. 

Sir, in my heart there was a kind of fighting, 

That would not let me sleep : methought I lay 

Worse than the mutines in the bilboes. Rashly, 

And praised be rashness for it, let us know, 

Our indiscretion sometimes serves us well. 

When our deep plots do pall ; and that should teach us 

There's a divinity that shapes our ends, 

Rough-hew them how we will.^ 

Of Ophelia the only evil is that she is not strong enough for the 
situation in which she finds herself; gifted with clearer insight 

1 Hamlet : V. ii, 4, and whole scene. 



MORAL ACCIDENT AND OVERRULING PROVIDENCE 32 1 

than that of others around her, the force of maidenly tradition 
checks her from acting on her instincts as to Hamlet. It is 
simple love yielding to unfavourable circumstances ; and the 
agony that follows brings Ophelia to pathetic doom, and yet a 
doom which only the accidental breaking of a tree bough made 
irremediable. As Ophelia appears a type of simple love, so 
Laertes represents simple sense of duty — to avenge a father's 
slaughter. Yet Laertes, like his sister, yields to circumstances, and 
is persuaded to exchange the public demand of justice for the fine 
scheme of private revenge : ^ accident once more intervenes, and — 
in the extraordinary shuffling of the foils — Laertes is pierced with 
the poisoned weapon he intended for another. 

Six times has the retributive principle in the universe asserted 
itself, and six times it has been an " accidental judgement." But 
in the wide field of action thus displayed what has been the motive 
force ? Nothing but the character of the hero, the peculiar char- 
acter of Hamlet. He is the great type of the inner life preponder- 
ating over the life without. Above all things Hamlet is the man of 
introspection ; his luminous subtlety in self-analysis has made this 
the classical poem of soul philosophy. His agile mind-play 
extending over the whole field of intellect and emotion enables him 
at will to assume even distraction, and use it as a stalking horse 
for his designs. But the moment Hamlet essays to act in the 
common world of men his emotional strength dissipates into 
sceptical indecision ; newer and ever newer trains of thought about 
acting exhaust the energy to act. The tragedy of Hamlet is that 
to the ideal man of the life within is intrusted a bold enterprise of 
the life without. How the Ghost's commission would have been 
executed if confided to a Macbeth or an Antony it is easy to 
imagine : the guilty King would have fallen by a single telling blow, 
and justice would have been satisfied. But as it is, the tentative 
hesitation of Hamlet enlarges the area of wrong ; for all the evil 
and ruin of the play — except the original crime that precedes the 
rise of the curtain — the delay of Hamlet is the occasion. And 

1 Hamlet: IV. vii, from 60. 
Y 



322 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

at last a sudden flash of action on Hamlet's part puts the finishing 
stroke to the whole tragedy. But this sudden determination seems 
possible for Hamlet only in the face of accident : of that twofold 
revelation of accident, that in a moment showed him the poisoned 
foil slaying the slayer as well as the victim, the poisoned drink 
intended for the enemy slaying the poisoner's beloved queen. 

The whole play of Hamlet is a rich blend of three elements : 
character, accident, nemesis, are here all interwoven.^ And the 
sense of overruling providence to which such cooperation points 
has never been more aptly phrased than in the famous saying of 

Hamlet — 

There's a divinity that shapes our ends, 
Rough-hew them how we will. 

These moral accidents are sudden openings into the unknown, 
giving us scattered intimations of a supreme Power behind the 
visible course of things, overruling all. Can Shakespeare go 
further, and afford us any revelation of the supreme Power itself? 
The Shakespearean Drama does not, like Job or Faust, give us 
a Council in Heaven, with Deity expounding his own purposes. 
Nor does it, like the Passion-Play of Ober-Ammergau, present 
Deity descended to earth, exhibiting itself in human form and 
human action. But there is a third alternative : to display human- 
ity ascending, not indeed into heaven, but at least to the position 
of an overruling providence. " If I were God — " : there is noth- 
ing irreverent in the fancy, and such a speculation, carried into 
detail, will bring the providential control of the universe home to 
our minds through our imagination and our sympathies. Now 
this is precisely the idea underlying Shakespeare's play of The 
Tempest. As remarked before, this is not a play of real life; 
Shakespeare assumes the hypothesis of enchantment. Enchant- 
ment is, within the enchanted circle, omnipotence; Prospero is, 
for the enchanted island, and for the single day during which his 
spells have force, a supreme controller of events. Accordingly, 

1 Compare the scheme of the play below, page 364. 



MORAL ACCIDENT AND OVERRULING PROVIDENCE 323 

as we follow the course of the poem, we are watching in dramatic 
presentation the mind of an overruling providence. 

I have elsewhere treated in detail The Tempest as a study of 
personal providence.-^ A few points only need be instanced here. 
Our first sign of providential control is the tempest itself, which is 
raised by Prospero to sweep his foes within the circle of his power, 
yet which is held in such restraint that there is no harm — 

No, not so much perdition as an hair 

Betid to any creature in the vessel 

Which thou heardst cry, which thou saw'st sink. 

Here is a hint of the great mystery of providence, by which the 
course of the objective world, common to all, can yet be made to 
work high purposes in the subjective lives of single individuals. 
After a back glance into the past, in which the providential work 
of mercy and judgment has been (so to speak) rehearsed in the 
control of the elemental beings Ariel and Caliban, we have a new 
phase as Miranda, out of her charmed sleep, wakes to behold 
Ferdinand, drawn on by enchanted music. 

Prospero. At the first sight they have changed eyes. 

What appeared an accident in the meeting of Romeo and Juliet, 
now is seen as the direct act of a controlhng power. Not less 
suggestive is the remaining course of this love episode : 

Prospero. This swift business 

I must uneasy make, lest too light winning 
Make the prize light. 

What might be drawn as a lesson from a course of events at the 
end, is here at the beginning made a providential purpose. 

A striking episode in the play is the Conspiracy of Antonio and 
Sebastian : conscienceless villains, just saved from the awful tem- 
pest, and already brooding over new schemes of treason.^ Mys- 

1 In my Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist, Chapter XIII. 

2 Tefnpest.- II. i, from iqi. 



324 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

teriously the whole train of courtiers, and the King himself, are 
suddenly locked in sleep ; Antonio and Sebastian are left wide 
awake. With increasing force the suggestiveness of the situation 
gains upon them ; it has become irresistible, and the two swords 
are being drawn from their sheaths, when in a moment the air has 
become vocal as the voice of Ariel warning Gonzalo : the courtiers 
spring to their feet, and face the two guilty men, elaborating ex- 
cuses for their drawn swords. Thus finely are touched two of the 
deepest mysteries in the conception of providential control : the 
providence of opportunity, that lures the sinner on to his sin ; 
the not less strange providence of accident, interposing when of 
other salvation there seems no hope. 

For the central incident of the drama we naturally look when 
the cruel authors of Prospero's expulsion from Milan encounter 
their victim in his plenitude of omnipotence.^ A supernatural 
banquet invites the exhausted King and his courtiers ; then, ere 
they can partake, the banquet vanishes and gives place to the 
avenging harpy, and the speech of doom is heard. 

You are three men of sin, whom Destiny, 
That hath to instrument this lower world 
And what is in't, the never-surfeited sea 
Hath caused to belch up you ; and on this island 
Where man doth not inhabit ; you 'mongst men 
Being most unfit to live. I have made you mad ; 
And even with such-like valour men hang and drown 
Their proper selves. 

[Alonso, Sebastian^ etc., draw their swords* 
You fools ! I and my fellows 
Are ministers of Fate : the elements, 
Of whom your swords are tempered, may as well 
Wound the loud winds, or with bemock'd-at stabs 
Kill the still-closing waters, as diminish 
One dowle that's in my plume : my fellow-ministers 
Are like invulnerable. If you could hurt, 
Your swords are now too massy for your strengths 

1 Tempest: III. iii. 



MORAL ACCIDENT AND OVERRULING PROVIDENCE 325 

And will not be uplifted. But remember — 

For that's my business to you — that you three 

From Milan did supplant good Prospero ; 

Exposed unto the sea, which hath requit it, 

Him and his innocent child : for which foul deed 

The powers, delaying, not forgetting, have 

Incensed the seas and shores, yea, all the creatures, 

Against your peace. Thee of thy son, Alonso, 

They have bereft ; and do pronounce by me, 

Lingering perdition, worse than any death 

Can be at once, shall step by step attend 

You and your ways ; whose wraths to guard you from — 

Which here, in this most desolate isle, else falls 

Upon your heads — is nothing but heart-sorrow 

And a clear life ensuing. 

Charmed from man's first instinct of physical resistance, sundered 
from the comforting neighbourhood of fellow-men, cut off from 
the regular course of nature which is the foundation on which 
rests the sense of security, alone with their sin and with Destiny 
— a Destiny whose agencies fill all space, while all time is but 
the delaying which is no forgetting — the three men of sin have 
awakened in a single moment to the whole doom of Hngering per- 
dition, and have just enough sanity left to know the sense of mad- 
ness. Here is the Shakespearean conception of hell : but it is a 
present hell, and a hell from which there is just one path of escape, 
in contrition and a purified hfe. 

Omnipotence has put forth its utmost of power: with what 
effect? Alonso is seen in agonies of remorse, the Alonso who 
before he came within Prospero's enchantment had a heart to 
suffer, who heard the name of Prospero in every thunderclap and 
whistle of the threatening storm.^ But Antonio and Sebastian, the 
hard-hearted, are hardened still further into resistance. 

Sebastian. But one fiend at a time, 

ril fight their legions o'er. 
Antonio. I'll be thy second.^ 

1 Compare Tempest: IH. iii. 95. 2 Tempest: III. ill. loa. 



326 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

The Shakespearean Drama has caught the spiritual mystery : He 
that is righteous, let him be righteous still ; and he that is filthy, 
let him be filthy still. 

There is yet one more phase in this revelation of personal provi- 
dence. Prospero's purpose extends ft-om judgment to mercy. 

The charm dissolves apace, 
And as the morning steals upon the night, 
Melting the darkness, so their rising senses 
Begin to chase the ignorant fumes that mantle 
Their clearer reason. . . . Their understanding 
Begins to swell, and the approaching tide 
Will shortly fill the reasonable shore 
That now Ues foul and muddy. 

What ensues gradually unfolds itself as a universal restoration, em- 
bracing not only the holy Gonzalo and the remorseful Alonso, but 
also the hardened Sebastian and Antonio, Caliban the gross, Stephano 
the drunken ; it extends even to the inanimate things of nature — 
the ship, that at the opening of the play had been seen to burn 
and sink, reappearing as trim as when she first left her dock. 

Is this sound theology? Are its parts even consistent one with 
the other? There is no question here of theology, there is no 
question of soundness, there is no question even of consistency. 
The whole is but the dramatisation of a fancy, the fancy of a 
human mind and heart elevated for a single day to the position 
of an overruHng providence. All the varied ideas which in the 
past have impressed thinking minds as they have surveyed the 
course of the world may here find a place, without sense of con- 
flict or need of reconcihation. Whatever it may be, this specula- 
tion on personal providence in The Tempest makes the natural 
close to the task attempted in this book. The dramatic expres- 
sion of the forces in the moral world of Shakespeare commences 
with personal will, its busy intrigues, and their ironic clashings. 
It extends to the various restraints, from within and from without, 
which limit personal will. It ends with the conception of person- 
ality projected to the supreme control of the universe. 



APPENDIX 

PLOT SCHEMES OF SHAKESPEAREAN DRAMAS 



PLOT IN SHAKESPEARE 

Dramatic Plot may be defined, from the artistic side, as the concur- 
rence of all that appears in a drama in a unity or harmony of design. 
Its interest is analogous to that of geometric drawing : a course of 
events may be appreciated in itself, like the beauty of a curve ; or 
various courses of events may be seen to harmonise, as with the intri- 
cacy of intersecting lines in a pattern. From the side of human 
interest it may be said that plot is in fiction what providence is for the 
real world ; every play is a microcosm, of which the poet is the creator, 
and its plot the providential scheme. The analysis of such plot is 
analogous to science, which takes to pieces the world of reality, and 
shows how these parts combine in a unity of evolution or law. 

The founder of literary criticism was Aristotle, and attempts are still 
made to adapt his system to modern poetry. But Greek drama and 
Shakespearean drama are at opposite ends of the dramatic scale : the 
one rests upon utter simplicity, the other upon infinite complexity. 
Circumstances of its origin made Greek tragedy a Hterary species by 
the distinguishing characteristic of the ' three unities ' : the unity of action 
limited a play to a single story, the unities of time and place still further 
limited the presentation of this story to its crisis, all the rest of it being 
conveyed indirectly. The romantic drama, on the contrary, combines 
in one play any number of different stories, exhibiting each story (it 
may be) from beginning to end. Thus beauty in Greek drama resolves 
itself into this — how much can be kept out: it rests upon indirect 
suggestion and sculpturesque pose. Beauty in romantic drama seeks, 
on the contrary, to get in all the matter possible, crowding in fulness 
of picturesque action, yet all of it within the bounds of harmony. 
Literature is the richer for containing these contrasted types : but the 
same plan of analysis will not fit both. In Greek drama plot was so 
simple that it was indistinguishable from movement of story. In the 
analysis of Shakespearean drama movement falls into the background ; 
what becomes prominent is the interweaving of different stories, that 
move side by side like the four parts of musical harmony, with the 
artistic effects of symmetry, balance, contrast, making themselves felt 
as these stories progress. The interest is closely akin to that of 
counterpoint in music. 

329 



330 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

The Unit of Plot 

In romantic drama, naturally, the unit of plot is the romance or story. 
Thus The Merchant of Venice takes three stories from different books 
of romance, adds to these a fourth story, and interweaves all four into 
a scheme of plot. [See above, page i68.] The word 'story,' how- 
ever, connotes the human interest; the corresponding term in art 
analysis is *■ action.' An action is a series of incidents that can be 
thought of as a separate whole. In Othello, we may take various 
details from successive parts of the play, and mentally put them 
together as ' the intrigue of lago to get money out of Roderigo ' : this 
is an ' action.' Such ' actions ' are the units into which a Shakespearean 
plot resolves itself ; * stories ' are actions which have human interest 
enough to stand alone (like the Story of the Pound of Flesh), whereas 
other actions would have interest only as analytic elements of a plot 
scheme. 

A story, or action, may be simple or ' complicated.' Any sequence 
of events which, for any purpose, is regarded as a unity, would be a 
simple action. In other cases a train of events is diverted from its 
apparent course — this is * compHcation' : there follows then either 
* resolution,' the complication being overcome, or tragic 'determina- 
tion,' the natural course of events being hopelessly destroyed. [See 
above, pages 162-3.] 

Note : In what follows the reader should refer to the plot scheme of 
each play as it is mentioned: the references give the pages below on 
which the schemes will be found. 

The foundation step in plot analysis is the identification of these 
actions : the perception of what, in regard to the design of the whole, 
is worth distinguishing as an independent unit. It is easy to see that 
an action is constituted by an exhibition of jealousy and subsequent 
reconciliation, as with Antipholus of Ephesus in Comedy of Errors 
(page 339), or the Fairies in Midsummer-Nighfs Dream (page 342) ; 
or by a misunderstanding and its explanation, as with Antipholus and 
his slave Dromio (page 339) ; or by the peril of ^geon and his sudden 
release in the same play; or by the haunting of the Mechanics and 
their disenchantment in Midsutnmer-Nighfs Dream (page 342) ; or 
by the artificial convention of the King and his suite in Love'^s Labour^ s 



APPENDIX 331 

Lost and the reaction under influence of his visitors (page 348) . Simi- 
larly, love that ends in marriage makes action after action in As You 
Like It and similar plays (pages 340, 349, etc.) ; an action is made by 
the tragic love of Suffolk in // Henry the Sixth, or by the wooing in 
broken French and English in Henry the Fifth (page 371). The 
friendship of Proteus and Valentine, interrupted and restored, makes 
an action (page 341), and so does the friendship of Achilles and 
Patroclus with its tragic termination (page 362). Not only is an ac- 
tion constituted by folly and its exposure, as with Parolles (page 345), 
but also by the sustained exhibition of folly, of which three types, mak- 
ing three separate actions, may be seen in Twelfth Night (page 340). 
So the sustained pathos of Cordelia's sufferings in Lear, or of Portia in 
fulius Ccesar (pages 354, 357), is sufficient to give individuality to an 
action ; similarly, the comic life portrayed through the two parts of 
Henry the Fourth (page 370) makes a comic action in the plots of those 
plays. We get a character action, such as that of Coriolanus (page 
358). Contrast of character makes a single action when it binds to- 
gether Achilles and Ajax into a single element of plot (page 362) ; or 
it is a point of contrast between two separate actions in Timon (page 
355), where of the two contrasting personages one is seen in the move- 
ment of the play to rise and fall, the other to fall and rise. Obviously, 
an intrigue makes a dramatic action. [Compare pages 343, 344.] 

No type of action is simpler than the nemesis action made by a crime 
and its retribution, of which the play of Richard the Third is full (page 
40-3). A whole group of actions may be described as arch actions: 




here plot form and geometric form become very close. An arch action 
may be a rise and fall, as in the case of the conspirators m fulius Ccesar 
(page 357) ; the passage from the end of success to the beginning of 
failure occurring at the centre of the drama, as if at the summit of the 
arch. Or, the arch reversed appears in such a plot as Winter's Tale, 
where there is fall and restoration, the oracle appearing as keystone 



332 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

(page 350). A field for ingenuity is open in the attempt to represent 
plot design in geometric figure. This last play, with its central oracle 
gathering up the sixfold destruction and shadowing the sixfold restora- 
tion, would be represented with considerable exactness by a figure like 
this. [Compare pages 70, 75, 350.] 




Sometimes what gives unity to an action is its connection with the 
movement of the drama. Thus in Two Gentlemen (page 341) the suc- 
cessive journeys of the different personages make a complicating action 
in the whole scheme. Or, the proceedings of Horatio in Ha?nlet (page 
364) are a stationary action : they are valuable in shedding light on 
the rest of the plot, but Horatio himself is not involved in the compli- 
cations which embrace the rest of the personages. 

It need cause no difficulty that an action is sometimes unified by 
more than one kind of interest, just as, in geometry, a line may be at 
one and the same time an arch and a wave line. In Merry Wives 




(page 343) the Ford action is obviously an intrigue ; but it is also a 
character action, the intrigue being a revelation of a peculiar form of 
jealousy. The Coriolanus action (page 358) is a triple action, of char- 
acter, nemesis, and pathos. [Compare page 124.] 



APPENDIX 



333 



The dramatic effect of counteraction may be ground for distinguish- 
ing separate actions ; thus, as soon as the character of Coriolanus 
(page 358) becomes an independent interest, it becomes worth while 
to recognise three other interests, because these are working in different 
ways against the realisation by Coriolanus of his ideals. [Compare 
cross actions, pages 359, 360, 361.] 

Subactions, — These are in the fullest sense actions, but they also 
stand in the relation of subordination, either to other actions, or to the 
design of the plot as a whole. In The Shrew (page 344) it is clear 
that the suits of Hortensio, of Gremio, of Lucentio, for the hand of 
Bianca are separate intrigue actions in the secondary plot. But the 
suit of Lucentio differs from the rest in the fact that he carries on a 
twofold wooing: a direct wooing in disguise, and an indirect wooing 
through his servant Tranio assuming the master's name. This differ- 
ence alone is sufficient reason for dividing the Lucentio action into two 
subactions ; there is a further reason in the fact that the Tranio sub- 
action comes into conflict with what constitutes the primary plot of the 
play. [See above, page 219.] Another type of subaction is seen in 
Much Ado (page 346) . The serious plot of that drama is made by a 
villanous intrigue (of Don John) destroyed by the farcical irony of the 
Watch (who blunder into an important discovery while they are fussing 
over trifles) . Now, the same villany produces another intrigue on a 
small scale — a misunderstanding between two friends, soon removed 
(see the references on page 346) ; and in the general trouble of the 
main intrigue there is an independent scene of petty irony, where 
Antonio, lecturing his injured brother on the duty of patience, loses his 
temper and has to be himself restrained. These two items are in no 
way essential to the main business, but have their place in the plot as a 
petty intrigue and a petty irony, reflecting the main intrigue and irony 
in the way in which, in architecture, the main lines of the building may 
be reproduced in the details of ornament. Two more subactions of the 
same kind may be seen in the same artistic plot : it is an irony (Leonato 
breaking off the hearing just before the secret comes out) that delays 
the main resolution, and it is an intrigue (an honest intrigue) of the 
Friar that restores the delayed resolution. [Compare a somewhat simi- 
lar case on page 360.] — We have generating subactions in Lear (page 
354), carried on to initiate the main situation, and then merged in 
other elements of the plot ; link subactions, and other terms, which will 
explain themselves. — In the succession of histories, where there is a 



334 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

unity stretching beyond single plays, it becomes necessary to indicate 
germ actions {e.g. page 371), to cover matter which has no relation to 
the plot of the particular play, but is (by necessity of historic date) 
inserted in that play to prepare for what will be found later. 

Circumstances. — An action is essentially a succession of details taken 
from different parts of the play. But sometimes the place in the design 
of the plot ordinarily held by an action is taken by a single isolated 
'circumstance.' Thus the shipwreck in Comedy of Errors (page 339) 
is an isolated fact of the past ; yet it must have a place in the plot, as a 
*■ motive circumstance,' since it is the source of movement for the whole 
drama, originating the situation out of which the separate actions arise. 
Similarly, a shipwreck is a motive circumstance for Twelfth Night; 
from this comes Viola, who brings about the complication of the play, 
and Sebastian, who resolves it. Again, in Two Gefitlemen (page 341) 
the accident of Valentine being captured by Outlaws and becoming 
their captain is the whole resolution of the plot ; it presents itself to 
our minds as a single point in the design upon which the different lines 
impinge. In Romeo (page 360) the accidental circumstance of the mas- 
querade initiates the main complication, the accidental circumstance of 
the infected house tragically determines the whole (above, pp. 52, 59). 
Other examples in Hamlet (page 364), and Merchant (page 347), and 
Timon (page 355). 

Compounding of Actions into Plots 

In Greek drama the whole plot of a play would be comprehended in 
a single action. In Shakespearean drama a number of single actions 
are interwoven into a plot, and such plots may be further compounded 
into a more complex plot, the various elements of such a scheme ex- 
hibiting mutual parallelism or contrast, or other effects of economic 
harmony. This has been fully illustrated in the discussion of comedy 
(above, pages 167-176). In the Comedy of Errors (page 339), Antiph- 
olus of Ephesus and Antipholus of Syracuse are centres of separate 
dramatic interests ; the one passes through a phase of family jealousy 
to its termination in reconciliation, the other falls in love with Luciana 
and eventually wins her. These two brothers Antipholus have further mis- 
understandings with the two Dromios, which are subsequently explained. 
Here are four distinct interests or actions going on at the same time, 
which, however, are not separate, but clash together, owing to the open- 



APPENDIX 335 

ing situation of mistaken identities. Obviously, a time will come when 
the pairs of twins will meet in the same place, and all the complications 
will resolve : the four actions will have been interwoven into a comic 
plot. But, as a fact, how is this brought about? Side by side with 
these actions another (serious) action has been in view — <^geon in peril 
of his life, until a sudden release comes ; this release is the meeting 
with the personages of the comic side, as a result of which the serious 
action brings about the resolution of the comic entanglement, and the 
meeting with the persons of the comic entanglement secures the salva- 
tion of i^geon. Thus the comic plot and the single serious action have 
been interwoven into the main plot of the play. — Or again, in the 
M.^r*-y Wives (page 343), we have three separate intrigues (FalstafF 
against the wives, the wives to punish FalstafF, and Ford to work out 
his jealous scheme) clashing together into what may be called the pri- 
mary plot: as a whole it may be described by the term < corrupt 
wooing.' Side by side with this we have another clash and disen- 
tanglement of three separate intrigues to win Anne Page ; each has its 
separate interest, but they unite in a second plot, which may be de- 
scribed by the term ' natural wooing.' These two plots go on side by 
side, contrasted in spirit, parallel in their form, each consisting of three 
clashing intrigues. But the scheme of the play involves still further 
interweaving, for the primary and secondary plots clash together in the 
common climax of the masquerade, each producing a reaction upon 
the other. [See above, pages 174-175.] — To take another instance: 
the plot of the Merchant of Venice may be roughly analysed as four 
stories interwoven (above, page 168). More fully (see page 347) we 
see in it a primary plot, that may be described as * character swayed by 
accident ' and a secondary plot exhibiting < accident swayed by char- 
acter.' [See above, pages 315-317.] These two plots, thus contrasting 
in matter, may, in form, be resolved into elements exactly parallel each 
to each : a main action, with two underactions reduplicating the main, 
one seriously, the other comically. There is further interweaving of 
the two plots, as the complicating and resolving forces of the primary 
are furnished by the leading personages of the secondary plot (page 
168) . — The scheme of Lear (page 354) is made up of two plots exactly 
parallel : in each a generating action produces a situation of problem, 
which finds a triple solution, the problem and the three elements of the 
solution being the same for each ; the two are drawn closer together by 
minor link actions. In the play of Troilus (page 362) we obviously 



336 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

have two plots very different in spirit : the one is an heroic, the other a 
love tragedy. The heroic tragedy is a clash of four tragic actions, 
drawn together into a common ruin ; the love plot is a similar clash of 
two love actions, tragically determined; the heroic and the love plot 
are seen in their progress to clash together. 

Underplots. — Where the whole scheme of a play shows multiple 
plot, the different plots may appear to stand upon equal footing, as in 
the primary and secondary plots of the preceding paragraph ; or one 
plot may stand in subordination, either to another plot or to the scheme 
as a whole. One source of such ' underplot ' is the purpose to give plot 
interest to the servants or dependants of the leading personages : this 
is the ^dependent underplot.' In Z^ar (page 354) one problem arises 
in the royal family itself, the other in the family of Gloucester, the 
King's chamberlain: this last is thus a dependent underplot. [For 
other examples, see pages 344, 347.] In Shakespeare's dramatic 
practice the spirit of an underplot may often be found where the term 
does not appear in the scheme of the play. Thus in such plays as 
Much Ado, Midsummer-Night, Love'^s Labour'' s Lost, As You Like It, 
there are personages (like Dogberry and Verges, the Mechanics, Armado, 
Audrey) who might well be centres of underplots, but as a fact they 
are taken up into the working of the main plots. Or again, the place 
of underplot is filled by subactions {Rofueo, Macbeth). — See the 
schemes of these plays : pages 360, 356. 

Enveloping Action. — This plays an important part in the compound- 
ing of plots and actions into a whole scheme. The term has been fully 
explained (above, page 264-8). 

Relief. Atmosphere. — The discussion of comedy and tragedy 
(above. Chapters VIII and IX) has emphasised the importance in 
Shakespeare of the mixture of tones, serious and lighter. These have 
a place in a scheme of plot, though they enter into it only indirectly. 
The essential idea of plot is that it should reduce all the matter of a 
play to a unity of design. But it will often appear that, when the 
whole scheme of plots and actions is complete, there still remains some 
matter unprovided for, and this is found upon examination to be part 
of the relief element of the play. Thus in Comedy of Errors (page 
339), over and above the drollery of the Dromios in conflict with their 
masters, which is one element of the plot scheme, there is further fiin 
on their part, e.g. the scene (III. ii, from 80) in which the fet kitchen 
wench is described. This has no place in the plot, but must be credited 



APPENDIX 337 

to ^relief/ Similarly in Twelfth Night (page 340), apart from all that 
makes the plot, there is a purpose to bring the Clown successively into 
contact with all the personages of the drama, with < relief effects. Thus 
a plot scheme ought to indicate the treatment of relief. Often the relief 
element is wholly immanent in the plot, or merged in particular persons 
or incidents (pages 347, 349^ 360, etc.)- At other times it is outside 
the plot scheme, scattered, without attempt at design, through various 
parts of the play (pages 339, 345? etc.). In other cases, the relief 
itself makes an underplot : thus in Two Gentlemen (page 341) it makes 
an atmosphere of itself contrasting with the atmosphere of the rest of 
the play; in Merry Wives (page 343) we have for relief an overplus 
of caricature personages, with subactions of complication and resolu- 
tion. Yet again we see cases in which the relief element is suggestive 
of design, though not amounting to underplot ; especially in Lear (page 
354), where it is concentrated in the central scenes, or Winter's Tale, 
where it distinguishes in spirit the resolution of the plot from its com- 
plication (page 350, compare above, pages 71-5)- 

Conclusion 

The leading literary interest in such plot analysis consists in realising 
how drama can extend the artistic effects of design — parallelism, har- 
mony, contrast — into so unpromising a medium as that of reahstic 
human life. At the same time the harmonies and contrasts are full of 
moral suggest! veness. 

A difficulty is felt by some : did Shakespeare really intend all these 
effects of design? Nothing of the kind is suggested. A particular 
poet may happen to be also a man of analytic mind ; but, as poet, all 
that he need be credited with is an exquisite sense of balance and har- 
mony. As the necessities of the story lead him to introduce particular 
details, the artistic instinct makes him feel these incomplete without 
other details to balance them. A sculptor does not go to work with a 
foot rule to measure the limbs he is modelling ; yet, when the statue is 
finished, another man may measure and find interesting ratios between 
length of arm and girth of waist. A man of musical genius may write 
excellent music, and yet he may be entirely ignorant of the counter- 
point by which others will discover in his composition regular system. 
In any case, the question how a poet came to produce his work can 
have no effect on the question of fact — whether the finished work does 



338 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE 

or does not exhibit such and such features. That many readers feel a 
difficulty in realising this is only one among many indications that lit- 
erary study is as yet imperfectly differentiated from other studies, such 
as biography ; many readers are unable steadily to observe the poetry 
from the fact of their attention wandering to the personal poet. 

Finally, it must be understood that a play can be analysed into very 
different schemes of plot. It must not be thought that one of these 
schemes is right and the rest wrong ; but the schemes will be better 
or worse in proportion as — while of course representing correctly the 
facts of the play — they bring out more or less of what ministers to 
our sense of design. 



339 

THE COMEDY OF ERRORS 

A Comedy of Situation 
Above, pages 169, 334 

Main Plot : From the Motive Circumstance of the Shipwreck 

Comic Plot : the Situation of Error developing as a 

Antipholus of Ephesus: Family Jealousy and 
Reconciliation 



Clash of four 
Actions 



Antipholus and Dromio of Ephesus : Misunder- 
standing and Explanation 

Antipholus of Syracuse : Fancy and Marriage 

Antipholus and Dromio of Syracuse : Misunder- 
standing and Explanation 

all four drawn by the Error into the maximum of Clashing — 
disentangled by contact with the Serious Action 

Serious Action : Peril and Release of /Egeon : impinging upon 
Comic Plot, resolving it and resolved by it 

Relief : Word fencing of Saucy Servants — scattered 



340 

TWELFTH NIGHT 
A Comedy of Situation Developing 

Above, pages 170-4 

Plot 

From the Motive Circumstance of the Shipwreck, by the Compli- 
cating Personage Viola [disguised as a page] : 

Main Plot : Situation of Error — developing into a Clash or 
Triangular Duel of Fancy 

Viola in love with Duke 

Duke in love with Olivia 

Olivia in love with Viola 

Underplot : A Triplet of Folly, graded 

Belch and Maria : natural abandon 
Aguecheek : imitation abandon 

Malvolio : unnatural antagonism to abandon 
developing into a Clash of the rest against Malvolio 

Clash of the Main and Underplot in the course of develop- 
ment : Intrigue to set Aguecheek against [disguised] Viola 

From the Motive Circumstance of the Shipwreck, by the Resolv- 
ing Personage Sebastian [twin to Viola] : 

Main Plot disentangled as a Double Marriage 
Viola and Duke 
Olivia and Sebastian 

Underplot : Resolved with the resolution of the Main Plot 
Relief 

Professional Folly of the Clown brought successively into contact 
with all the personages of the plot 



341 

THE TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA 

A Comedy of Situation developing 

Above, pages 222-8 



Main Plot: With Atmosphere of the Gay Science [pages 180-4] 
Original Situation 



Disconnected 
Triplet 



Friendship of Proteus and Valentine 
Love of Proteus and Julia 



Thurio's suit to Silvia [in Milan] 
First phase of the Complicating Action : Journey of Valentine 



Connected 
Triplet 



Friendship of Proteus and Valentine 

Love of Proteus and Julia 

Rivalry of Valentine and Thurio for Silvia 



Second phase of the Complicating Action : Journey of Proteus 

against Love : Proteus felse to Julia 

against Friendship : Proteus false to Valentine 

in Social Life : Proteus false to Thurio 



Triple 
Intrigue 



Third phase of the Complicating Action : Journey of Julia in disguise 

in Love : Proteus wooing Silvia in presence of 
Julia 

in Friendship : Silvia drawn unconsciously to 
Triple Irony Julia by the falseness of Proteus to Valen- 
tine 

in Social Life : Proteus mocking Thurio, with 
Julia's asides 

Resolving Accident : The Outlaws : stopping successive fugitives 
bring about final clash and Final Situation 



Harmonised 
Triplet 



Friendship of Proteus and Valentine 
Love of Proteus and Julia 
Love of Valentine and Silvia 



Underplot : Relief Atmosphere of Abandon. [Saucy servants — farcical 
word fencing — Dog sentiment parodying sentiment of Gay Science.] 



342 

A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM 
A Comedy of Situation and Enchantment 
Above, pages 229-33 



Plot 



Enveloping Action : Nuptials of Theseus and Hippolyta 

Enveloping Motive Atmosphere : Enchantment of the Wood 
on Midsummer-Night 

Instruments of /Complicating: Cupid's Flower 

Enchantment \. , . . , 

^Resolvmg : Dian's Bud 

Main Plot : Clash in common Enchantment, and Disentangle- 
ment, of 

Fancy: the Lovers. [A triple situation of 
perversity — complicated into quadruple 
perversity — further complicated into com- 
plete mutual hostility — resolved into har- 
mony as two pairs of lovers.] 



Three Types 
of Life 



Relief : immanent in plot 



Fairy Life : Oberon and Titania. [Conjugal 
quarrel — complicated into distraction of 
monstrosity — resolved into reconciliation.] 

Burlesque (unconscious) : The Mechanics. 
[Complicated into distraction of haunting 
and resolved.] 



343 



^ 



THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR 

A Comedy of Intrigue 

Above, pages 174, 228 



Main Plot 

Primary : Corrupt Wooing — a Clash of 



Triple 
Intrigues 



Character Intrigue : Falstaif against the Wives 

Intrigue of Character : Ford's Jealousy 
Counter Intrigue of Nemesis: The Wives 
against Falstaff 



Secondary : Natural Wooing (of Anne Page) — a Clash of 

Caricature : Slender's Suit [backed by the father 
— from motives of estate] 
Triple Caricature : Caius's Suit [backed by the mother 

Intrigues — from motives of fortune] 

Character : Fenton's Suit [backed by the girl — 
for true love] 



Clash of Primary and Secondary plots in a common climax of 

Primary : final nemesis (and reaction) 
Secondary : character vanquishes caricature 
Mutual Reaction : the laugh turned against the 
persecutors of Falstaff. [Compare V. v. 247.] 



The Mas- 
querade 

Underplot of Relief 



Chorus of Caricatures 



Simple 

Mistress Quickly 
Bardolph, Pistol and Nym 
Sir Hugh Evans 
Host of the Garter Inn 



< Complication : Host's trick on Duellists [II. 
-' 
Resolution : Duellists' trick on Host [IV. iii 
and v] / 



344 

THE TAMING OF THE SHREW 

A Comedy of Character and Intrigue 

Above, pages 312-22 



Main Plot 



Primary: Paradoxical Wooing — Intrigue of Petruchio to tame 
the Shrew Katherine 



Secondary : Natural Wooing (of Bianca) — a Clash of 



Triple 
Intrigues 



Suit of Hortensio [neighbour] : rising out of 
the Primary plot and absorbed into it 

Suit of Gremio [old man] : defeated 

Suit of Lucentio [young stranger] : attained — 
takes a double form 

c /(a) Wooes for himself in disguise as 
•-g / Cambio 

-a \ 

(^ \(^) His servant Tranio wooes in his 
master's name in order to head oflf 
rivals 



Clash of Primary and Secondary plots through Subaction (b) 

< Complication : Tranio's false Vincentio encountered by the 
real Vincentio of the Primary plot 
Resolution : General comic Reconciliation 
Dependent Underplot of Relief : Grumio as the Saucy Servant 



345 



ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL 
A Comedy of Character and Intrigue 

Above, pages 236-8 

Plot 

Serious Plot : Love of Helena for Bertram 

Generating Subaction : Helena's healing of the King — which 
develops : 

•Intrigue of Bertram to evade marriage relations 
Cross Intrigues<f 

^Intrigue of Helena to restore marriage rela- 
tions 

Comic Plot : Folly [Heroic Imposture] and Exposure : Parolles : 
rising out of the Serious Plot and determined by the Enveloping 
Action 

Enveloping Action : Florentine War 

Relief : Humour of the Clown — scattered 



346 



MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING 

A Comedy of Character and Intrigue 

Above, pages 233-6 

Plot 

Serious Plot: Love of Claudio and Hero 

Complicating Villany Action : Intrigue of Don John 



yPetty Intrigue: Misunderstanding of Friends: 



.2 / Claudio and Don Pedro [I. iii, from 42 ; II. i, 

■§\ from 161] 

c^ ^Petty Irony: Rivalry of the angry Brothers: 
Leonato and Antonio [V. i] 

Resolving Farcical Action : Irony of the Watch's discovery 

CO 

.9 /(delaying) Irony of Leonato's Impatience [III. v] 

i \ 

j3 ^(restoring) Righteous Intrigue of the Friar 

in 

Supplementary Comic Underplot: Paradoxical Intrigue to 
bring Benedick and Beatrice together 

Enveloping Action : Rebellion of Don John 

Relief : implicit in the comic and farcical elements of the plot 



347 

THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 

A Comedy of Character and Accident 

Above, pages 315-7 

Primary Plot : Character swayed by Accident 

Main Nemesis Action : Story of the Pound of Flesh : a supremely 
noble Christian at the mercy of a supremely base Jew — the posi- 
tions suddenly reversed 

Complicating Accident : The rumoured Shipwrecks 
Resolving Accident : The forgotten Statute 

Dependent Underactions 

A. Reduplicating the Main action: the Jew's daughter for- 
sakes her father for a Christian 

AA. Farcical Subaction : the Clown transferred from Jewish 
to Christian service 

Enveloping Action : Mediaeval Feud of Jews and Christians 

Secondary Plot : Accident swayed by Character 

Main Problem Action: The Caskets Story — an apparent crisis 
of chance really determined by character 

Complicating 

and Resolving Circumstance : The three Caskets 

Dependent Underactions 

B. Reduplicating the Main action : Gratiano and Nerissa 
BB. Comic Subaction : Ironic Episode of the Betrothal Rings 

Clash and Disentanglement of Primary and Secondary : the Secondary 
Plot is the Motive force of the Primary 

Complicating Personage : Bassanio 
Resolving Personage : Portia 

Relief : merged in individual personages of the plot 



348 



LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST 
A Comedy of Convention and Humour 

Above, page 267 

Plot 

Enveloping Motive Action : the French Embassage 

Complicates : by introducing the Humorous Atmosphere 
Resolves : the French king's death converts all to serious 

Atmosphere of Artificial Convention 

A. The King and/^"^^"^^^ themselves : the Vow 
his Suite \ag against outsiders : Celibacy 

<in himself: Euphuism 
in relation to outsiders : Hypocrisy 

C. Nathaniel and/^^^^"^^^l^^^' Pedantry 

Holofernes Xf^j. outsiders : Pompous Pageantry 

Atmosphere of Natural Humour Complicating and Resolving 

AA. The Princess and /the Vow 

her Suite: break down\he Celibacy 

yMoth : foil to the Euphuism of B [as true wit] 
BB. ^ 

^Jaquenetta : attracts B to hypocrisy 

/Dull : foil to the Pedantry of C [as plain sense] 
CC. / 

^Costard : breaks down the pompous pageant [V. ii. 678] 

Relief : immanent in the plot 



349 

AS YOU LIKE IT 
A Comedy of Convention and Humour 

Above, page 179 



Plot 



Outer Enveloping Action : Civil War of the Dukes — ends in 

Religious Conversion 
Inner Enveloping Action : Feud in the de Boys family — ends 

in Dramatic Conversion 



. Love and Disguise: Rosalind and 
Orlando 



Main Plot of 
Quadruple Loves 



2. Love and Folly: Audrey and Touch- 
stone 

3. Conventional Love: Phebe and Silvius 

4. Love at first sight : Celia and Oliver 



Inner Atmosphere : Play of 

Natural : Rosalind 
Triple Humour Professional : Touchstone 
Morbid: Jaques 

Outer Atmosphere : Conventional Pastoral Life : The Forest of 
Arden 



Relief : immanent in the plot 



350 

THE WINTER'S TALE 
A Comedy of Fall and Restoration 

Above, pages 65-76, 332 



Plot: An Arch Plot of Fall and Restoration — bound together by 
Oracular Interest 



The Fall: Tragic Tone: Sundering of Sicilia and Bohemia 
through Jealous Madness of Leontes 

lost wife 

lost friend 
4y^ \. lost son 
^-^c/ Nv lost babe 

^,$>^\^ lost minister (Camillo) 
'-'c^. \. lost servant (Antigonus) 

^ N. ORACLE I ^^^^^^^ destruction revealed 
^ y' I sixfold restoration shadowed 

^ y^ Antigonus's widow united to Camillo 
^<3^ y^ minister restored 
-yb- // lost daughter found 
jA^ y^ son-in-law in son of old friend 
friend restored 
wife restored as from the grave 

The Rise : Pastoral Tone : Reuniting of Sicilia and Bohemia by 
the Romantic Love of Florizel and Perdita 

Underplot of Relief : Atmosphere of Rural Simplicity (flavoured with 
Roguery) accompanying passage at centre from Complication to 
Resolution. [Above, pages 71-5-] 



351 

CYMBELINE 
A Comedy of Fall and Restoration 



Plot : An Arch Plot of Tangled Wrong and Harmonious Restoration 
— with Oracular Interest for emphasis. [Above, pages 76-88.] 

The Wrong and Fall 

1 . Blind Wrong [Cymbeline v. Belarius and Pos- 
thumus] — loss of all — restored by victims 

2. Perverse Wrong : Retaliation [Belarius v. 
Cymbeline] — banished life — rescues vic- 
tims in crisis 

Sixfold scale 3. Perverse Wrong : False Honour [Posthumus] 
of Graded — lower crime — remorse — reunion 
Wrong 4. Perverse Wrong: False Candour [lachimo] 
— lower crime — shame — reunion 

5. Crafty Villany [the Queen] — by irony of 
death an instrument of restoration 

6. Stupid Villany [Cloten] — by irony of death 
an instrument of restoration 

by (i) loses husband 
by (2) loses brothers 
by (3) loses her love 
by (4) loses her reputation 
by (5) her life threatened 
by (6) her honour threatened 
honour saved 
life saved 

reputation cleared 
love restored 
brothers found 
husband recovered 
The Restoration and Rise 

Suffering Innocence : Imogen 
Suffering Fidelity : Pisanio 
Suffering Guilt : Posthumus and lachimo 
Honest Intrigue : Cornelius 
Nature 

Overruling Providence. [With Oracle.] 
Enveloping Action : British and Roman War 
Relief : Atmosphere of Open Air Life in the Restoration 



Motive Centre 
Imogen 



Sixfold 
Forces of 
Restora- 
tion 



2. 
3- 
4- 
5- 
6. 



352 

THE TEMPEST 

A Comedy of Enchantment and Restoration 

Above, pages 322-6 

Plot: An Arch Plot of Tangled Wrong and Restoration — resting 
upon the idea of Enchantment as omnipotence 

Enveloping Motive Action : Enchantment of Prospero 

Main Plot: The Three <Men of Sin' [III. iii. 53] 

^v Usurpation of Milan by Antonio 
■'v^)\ Feud of Alonso and Prospero 

*^^>\ Conspiracy of Antonio and Sebastian [II. i] 
%\ 
vf- > Motive Centre : Common Madness 



(C^ 



^<2f>X Conspiracy averted at its crisis 



^^y^ Alonso and Prospero become kinsmen 
Throne of Milan abandoned 



Underplot : linking the two sides of the Main Plot 

/Ariel : upward : assisting 

1. Beings of Enchantment / ^ ^.["^P^"? 

\ Caliban : downward : resist- 

\ ing Prospero 

2. Children: Enchanted Love <^^^'^^^^ 

\ Ferdinand 

3. Servants: Intoxicated Conspiracy <^^^^^^^^ 

\Stephano and Trinculo 

4. Spectators: Miracle<^^°"^^^''' ^^^ ^^ <^°"^^^o 

\ Sailors, led by Boatswain 

5. Background of Nature/'^^'^P^^* 

\Calm 

Common Climax of Universal Restoration 
Relief : merged in Nos. 3, 4 of Underplot — and in Mask 



353 



Plot 



MEASURE FOR MEASURE 
A Problem Comedy 

Above, pages 143-57 

Enveloping Motive Action : The Duke 

•His withdrawal generates the Problem 

^His return assists the Solution 

Main Plot : Respectable Life [Angelo etc.] : Law accepted 
' Problem Situation 

Law and Individual 
Triple Clash Purity and Passion 
Outer and Inner 
Solution : General Harmony of Mercy 

Nemesis Action (assisting the generation of the Problem) : 

Claudio and Juliet 
Character Action (emphasising the Solution) : Escalus — 

Provost 

a. Angelo's Intrigue against Isabella 



^Complicating | ^ intrigue to hasten Claudio's death 

aa. Duke's Intrigue to substitute Mari- 
ana for Isabella 
bb. Accidental provision of a substitute 
for Claudio 



1\ 

^ Resolving 



Link Action : Loose Life : Lucio 
^Complication : Raillery 

^Resolution : Irony (of events) 

Underplot : Low Life : Vice accepted 
''Complication : Hardened Vice 



Resolution: Mercy 
[Escalus] as 



another chance 

discrimination of character between 
Overdone and Pompey 

Relief : merged in Link Action and Underplot 



2A 



354 



KING LEAR 



A Problem Tragedy 



Above, pages 141-3 



Plot 



Main Plot 



r Problem Situation : 



Solution 



Lear [Passion] : a father reversing 
moral equilibrium of the family 



Nemesis (double) on the father 
Triple Sequence Sufferings of the Innocent : Cordelia 
of events Power used by the evil for their own 

destruction : Goneril and Regan 

Generating Subaction : Cordelia's Outburst of temper 



Dependent Underplot 

Generating Subaction : Edmund's Plot against Edgar 
Problem Situation : Gloucester [Weakness] : a father revers- 
ing moral equilibrium of the family 
Solution 

Nemesis (double) on the father 
Triple Sequence Sufferings of the Innocent : Edgar 
of events Power used by the evil for his own 

destruction : Edmund 



Link Subactions 



< 



Albany: rising 



^Cornwall : sinking 
.Oswald : Servility and Nemesis 
■^Kent : Plainness and Pathos 
Enveloping Action : War of England and France 



< 



Relief : concentrated in centre of the movement [pages 190-1] 
Real : Lear 
Triple Madness Feigned : Edgar 

Professional : the Fool 

with an accompaniment of Nature Passion : The Storm 



355 



TIMON OF ATHENS 

A Tragedy of Character 

Turning upon the Outer and Inner Life 



Plot 



Main Action 

^Timon (Inner Life) : Rise and Fall. [Volun- 
tary Communism — by Enveloping Action 



/ 



Character , determined to tragic ruin.] 

Contrast \ ° -" 

^Alcibiades (Outer Life) : Fall and Rise. [In- 
jury from Enveloping Action — roused to 
redress.] 



- . , ^. , TA* y emphasises the Fall of Timon 

Link Circumstance : Dis- / ^ 

covery of Gold \ ^^^^^^ t^e Rise of Alcibiades 



y restrains the communism 
Link Personage : Flavins <^ 

^ a comforter in ruin- 



Enveloping Action : Social Corruption of Athens 

Underplot of Relief ; Misanthropic Humour of Apemantus [with oc- 
casional emphasis from the Fool] — in contact with the enveloping 
corruption and tragic misanthropy 



356 



MACBETH 
A Tragedy of Character and Nemesis 

Above, pages 246-64 
Turning upon the Outer and Inner Life 

Plot 

Main Action 

Character /Macbeth (Outer Life) . j^ ^j^^ ^^^^ ^^ ^^^ 



Contrast\Lady Macbeth (Inner Life)/ ^^^ ^^^ 






Subaction to Rise : Banquo [Rival of Inner Life] : Nobility 
and Pathos 

Subaction to Fall : Macduff [Rival of Outer Life] : Unwis- 
dom (over-caution) with Nemesis and Restoration 



Enveloping Action : [Illuminating : see pages 309-10] : Oracu- 
lar Action [rationalised] of the Witches 

Relief : Incident ; the Porter : Farcical Wit 



357 



JULIUS C^SAR 

A Tragedy of Character and Nemesis 

Above, pages 125-8 

yOuter Life : pure Roman ideal of the State 
Turning upon the <^ 

Mnner Life : claims of the Individual 



Plot 

Main Nemesis Action : The Conspiracy : Rise and Fall 



System of 

Subactions 



^Character Contrast : Brutus and Cassius 
^Pure Pathos : Brutus and Portia 

ySubaction to Rise : Fall of Caesar 



^Subaction to Fall : Rise of Antony 
Enveloping Action : Roman Mob and Civil Faction 
Relief : Scattered details — in the Mob and Casca 



358 



CORIOLANUS 
A Tragedy of Character, Nemesis and Pathos 

Above, pages 113-25 

yOuter Life : Principle : Roman ideal of the State 
Turning upon <^ 

Nnner Life : Compromise : Claims of Individuality 

Main Plot 

Cross Actions 

Character Action: Coriolanus : Pure Ideal of the State. 
[Maintained against the first counteraction — yielding to 
the second in Nemesis — by the third converted to Pathos.] 



First Counteraction : The People and Tribunes : Claims of In- 
dividuality. [By compromise of banishment a Nemesis.] 

Second Counteraction : Volumnia : Kinship and Patriotism 
'{ {i.e. local loyalty) modifying Ideal of the State. [By com- 

promise of attempted reconciliation produces Nemesis.] 

Third Counteraction: Aufidius: Personal Rivalry modifying 
Ideal of the State. [Converts Nemesis to Pathos.] 

Enveloping Action : Wars of Romans and Volscians 

Underplot of Relief : Menenius : Stationary Character Action treated 
for * plainness ' {i.e. Clown humour) 



359 



ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA 
A Tragedy of Character, Nemesis and Pathos 

Above, pages 128-40 

yOuter Life : Public Life (of Antony) 
Turning upon <^ 

^Inner Life : Private Life (of Antony) 



Main Plot 

yAntony and Caesar : Outer Life 
Cross Actions/ 

^Antony and Cleopatra : Inner Life 

[Corrupted individuality brings to Antony and Cleopatra 
Nemesis of external ruin — out of this ruin rises Pathos of 
individual nobility.] 

Epic form : Five stages of movement 

1. Opening Situation : Public Life neglected for Private 

2. Return to Public Life : Rise of Antony 

3. Fall of Antony: Public Life infected with spirit of 
Private Life 

4. Pathos of nobility in ruin of Antony 

5. Pathos of imitative nobility in ruin of Cleopatra 
Enveloping Action : Roman Civil War 

Underplot of Relief : Enobarbus : Dependent Action treated for Humour 
— changing to Pathos with the pathos of the Main Action 



36o 



ROMEO AND JULIET 
A Tragedy of Pathos 

Above, pages 46-64 

Plot 

Cross Actions 

A. Feud of Montagues and Capulets : tragically reconciled 

aa. Subaction : Feud of Duellist and Humourist (Tybalt 
and Mercutio) : tragically determined — assists 
counteraction 

bb. Subaction : Suit of Paris : tragically determined — 
assists counteraction 

B. Love of Romeo and Juliet : tragically consummated 

< initiating : The Masquerade 
determining : The Infected House 

•reconciling: Friar Laurence: honest 

,, ^ / herb wonders 

Motive Personages <f 

destroying: The Apothecary : dishonest 
herb wonders 

Enveloping Action (rudimentary) : Omens of impending Fate 

Relief: merged in minor personages [Mercutio, Nurse, Peter, Mu- 
sicians] 



36i 



Plot 



TITUS ANDRONICUS 
A Tragedy of Horror 

Cross Actions 

Feud of Andronicus family and Saturninus 

First Counteraction : Feud of Tamora family against Andro- 
nicus 

Second Counteraction : Intrigue of Tamora and Aaron 

Third Counteraction : Love of Bassianus and Lavinia 

Enveloping Action : Roman and Gothic Wars 

Relief : Incident of the Countryman treated for Rustic Wit 



362 



TROILUS AND CRESSIDA 
A COMBINED Heroic and Love Tragedy 



Main Plot (Double) : An Heroic Tragedy and a Tragedy of Love 
drawn together in a common Enveloping Action 

Enveloping Action : War of Greeks and Trojans [Emphasised 
by Oracular Action of Cassandra] 

Central Link Circumstance uniting Heroic and Love plots: 
Calchas's claim of his daughter (III. iii) 

Heroic Plot 

1. Friendship of Achilles and Patroclus 

2. Intrigue of Achilles and Polyxena (III. iii, 
Clash of from 190) 
Heroic Actions 3. Character Contrast: Proud Achilles and 

proud Ajax 
4. Rivalry of Achilles and Hector 
tragically determined. [No. 3 rouses Achilles (III. iii. 225) to 
the final battle — No. 2 delays him (V. i. 42), until death of 
Patroclus (No. i) maddens him to treacherous overthrow of 
Hector (No. 4).] 



Love Plot 



Clash of 
Love Actions 



5. Passion of Troilus for Cressida 

6. Intrigue of Cressida and Diomedes 



tragically determined in deadly feud of Troilus and Diomedes 

Clash of Heroic and Love Plots. [Troilus in deadly feud per- 
suades Hector (V. iii, from 31) to the final battle against the 
warning of the omens.] 

Underplot of Relief 

Thersites, of the Heroic plot ) ^^^^j^^ j^, Qown humour 
Pandarus, of the Love plot > 



3^3 



OTHELLO 
A Tragedy of Situation developed by Intrigue 

Above, pages 238-41 
Plot: 



Main Action 

Original Situation 

Trio 

of Love Actions 



1. Bianca's liaison with Cassio 

2. Roderigo's pursuit of Desdemona 

3. True love of Desdemona and 
Othello 



Motive Intrigues centring in lago 



Four Intrigues 



4. Intrigue against Roderigo to draw 

money 
(S- Intrigue to gain Cassio's office 
1^6. Intrigue against Cassio's life 
7. Intrigue against Othello to make 
him feel the pangs of Jealousy 



by lago as motive centre all drawn into a unity — with 
8. Reaction : all lago's intrigues recoiling on him in Nemesis 
Enveloping Action : The Turkish War 
Relief : Episodes of the Clown 



364 



HAMLET 



A Tragedy of Nemesis, Character and Accident 



Above, pages 318-22 



Main Plot 



System of Six 
Actions : 
Graded Wrong 
with Nemesis 
and Pathos 



6. 



The King : Greater Crime and (Accident as- 
sisting) full Nemesis 

The Queen : Lesser Crime and (Accident as- 
sisting) pathetic Nemesis 
Polonius : Politic Intermeddling and (Acci- 
dent assisting) pathetic Nemesis 
Guildenstern and Rosencrantz : Lesser na- 
ture intermeddling and (Accident assisting) 
Nemesis 

Ophelia : Simple Love yielding to circum- 
stances and (Accident assisting) pathetic 
Nemesis 

Laertes: Simple Duty yielding to circum- 
stances and (Accident assisting) Nemesis 



Motive Character Action : Hamlet (resting on Outer and Inner 
Life): by hesitation enlarging the Wrong — by sudden determina- 
tion (Accident assisting) consummating the Nemesis and Pathos 

Motive CiRCUMSTANCEs/'"'^f "^ "'°^''"""'; *he Ghost 

\assistmg consummation: the Pirates 

Stationary Character Action : Horatio : illuminating the plot 

Enveloping Action : Wars of Norway and Denmark 

Underplot of Relief [Pages 191 -4] 



Successive phas- 
es of Passion 
(involved with 
the Main) 



Supernatural Awe : Ghost Incidents 
Hysteric Mockery of Hamlet 
Histrionic Passion of the Players 
Pathetic Madness of Ophelia 
Weird Humour : The Gravediggers 



365 



THE HISTORIC SERIES 

Ten Plays of English History bound together by a 
Movement of Historic Alternation 

[Above, Chapter XIII] 

Prologue Play : King John 

Alternation between England with King John and 
France backing claims of Arthur to the English Crown 

Starting point for the Alternation : Evenness of the two sides empha- 
sised by Angiers defying armies of three potentates \I-II. i. 41^'] 

The Blanch-Dauphin alliance [II. i, from 416] : 
pendulum swinging to the English side : Eng- 
land, France and Austria all against Arthur: 
despair of Constance [II. i. 416-III. i. 134] 

A turning-point in the entrance of the Papal Legate : Rome, 
France and Austria all against England : triumph of Con- 
stance [III. i, from 135] 

Fortune of War reverses all this : Austria anni- 
hilated, France defeated, Arthur taken prisoner, 
Faulconbridge mulcting Roman property in 
England : despair and death of Constance [III. 
ii-III. iv. Ill] 

Reaction : complete security of the English king encourages 
designs against Arthur's life — revulsion of people, desertion 
of English nobles and invasion of England by the French 
prince [III. iv. 112-end of IVJ 

Upon submission of the English crown to the 
Pope Rome is transferred to the other side — 
Faulconbridge rouses resistance to invasion, 
French reinforcements lost at sea, treason 
against English nobles brings them back to 
their allegiance [V. i-v] 

Accident of the Washes shows fortune turning against the 
English when King John suddenly dies of poison 



366 
Eight Plays 

Alternation between power of the Crown on the 
one and on the other side foreign war or sedi- 
tious nobles, culminating in the Wars of the Roses 

Starting point in play of Richard the Second: the Divine Right of 
Kifigs in supreme emphasis by contrast with frivolity of the King: a 
turning-point in the awakening of the Return from Ireland \^I-III. 
i. 62] 

Downfall and deposition of King Richard with 
rise of the rebellion under Bolingbroke assisted 
by Northumberland [III. i. 63-IV] 

Bolingbroke as King Henry the Fourth, with Northumber- 
land as chief supporter, triumphant over all faction [V] 

With the plays of Henry the Fourth appears the 
breach between King Henry and Northumber- 
land, who serves [above, page 281] as link be- 
tween factious uprisings in England, Scotland, 
Wales. [Highest point of the rebellion indi- 
cated in III. i. of First Part] 

Hesitation of Northumberland [above, page 283] paralyses 
the union of rebels, and they are defeated piecemeal. [Fail- 
ure of the rebellion indicated in II. iii of Second Part.] 

News of the complete overthrow of the rebellion 
causes apoplexy and death of King Henry [IV. 
iv, from 80] 

Central stage of rest in the Historic Alternation : the kingly character 
wiites all factions : English^ Welsh, Scotch, Irish, all cooperate in the 
War against France. [^Play of Henry the Fifth.'] 

In / Henry the Sixth the Historic Alternation recommences, and is 
traced, first in the war with France, then in sedition by nobles 



3<57 

Succession of English losses: the Dauphin at 
Orleans elate with hope [I. i-ii. 21] 

Battle : the Dauphin in full retreat [I. ii. 22-46] 

Sorcery : Accession to the French forces of the 
Holy Maid [I. ii, from 47] 

Surprise : Recovery to the English side of Talbot redeemed 
from captivity [I. iv. 23-68] 

Gun Incident : Salisbury is slain by the French 
[I. iv, from 69] 

Outburst of English rage and Dauphin put to flight [I. v. 
init. stage-direction] 

Sorcery: Advance of the Holy Maid: the Eng- 
lish routed and siege of Orleans raised [I. v, vi] 

Night Attack : panic of the French, and Orleans taken by 

the English [H. i-ii. 33] 

Stratagem of Duchess of Auvergne to capture 
Talbot [H. ii. 34-iii. 42] 

Counter stratagem of Talbot : Duchess of Auvergne over- 
powered [n. iii, from 43] 

Stratagem of warriors disguised as market people : 
Rouen taken by the French [HI. ii. 1-74] 

Rouen retaken the same day by the English, — incident of 
Bedford's death [HI. ii, from 75] 

Diplomacy : the English ally Burgundy detached 
by eloquence of the Holy Maid [HI. iii] 

Act IV {of I Henry the Sixth) is a parenthesis in the movement of 
alternation : seditious spirit of English nobles {indicated in I. i, iii ; II. 
iv, V ; III. z] now comes to affect the French war. [Adove, page 288.1 

The English capture the Holy Maid, and the power of 
sorcery is overthrown [V. ii ; iii. 1-44; iv] 

The English capture Margaret of Anjou, whose 
infatuating beauty brings about surrender of Eng- 
lish conquests in France [V. iii, from 45 ; v] 



368 



With // Henry the Sixth the movement of Historic Alternation is trans- 
ferred to the factions of English nobles 

The faction of Queen Margaret, supported by 
Suffolk and Winchester, wins a series of triumphs 
over the Protector Gloucester, culminating in his 
murder [I^III. ii. 26] 

General revulsion of feeling: the King alienated from his 
Queen, Winchester dies of remorse, Suffolk banished and 
slain by pirates [III. ii. 27-IV. i] 

Sedition reappears in the popular rising of Jack 
Cade (secretly prompted by York), which is 
successful over the royal forces [IV. ii-viii] 

Gradually the rebels melt away, Jack Cade is slain by Iden 

of Kent [IV. viii-x] 

Act V {of II Henry the Sixth) is a parenthesis in the movement of alter- 
nation : bringing to a climax claims of York that have been rising through 
two plays [see above^ pages 290-2] — by successful resistance at St. 
Alban'^s sedition grows into Wars of the Roses 

With /// Henry the Sixth the Historic Alternation is traced wholly in 
the Wars of the Roses : seen in relief against a background of the 
unwarlike king [especially II. v and III. i] 

York in the ascendant: King Henry compro- 
mises by recognising York as his successor 
[I. i. 1-210] 

Revulsion of feeling in favour of Lancaster and the Queen : 
Victory of Wakefield, assassination of York and Rutland 
[I. i. 211-II. ii] 

Revulsion of feeling in favour of York : Victory 
of Towton, Clifford slain and King Henry taken 
prisoner [II. iii to III. i] 

Edward of York as King makes a mesalliance : Warwick, 
Clarence, and French alliance secured for Lancaster — in- 
vasion, King Edward taken prisoner [III. ii-IV. iv] 



369 



Escape of King Edward by stratagem [IV. v] 

King Henry in power, supported by Clarence [IV. vi] 

Advance of Edward : King Henry captured and 
Clarence returns to Yorkists — battles of Barnet 
and Tewkesbury — capture of Queen, assassina- 
tion of Prince and King [IV. vi. JJ-V] 

With the play of Richard the Third the Historic Alternation is seen 
in the House of York divided against itself: double alternation in the 
whole and the parts. [Above, pages 42-4.] 



Main Plot : the Rise and 

The Rise of Richard is the motive 
force of an alternating system of 
Nemesis actions, the victor of one 
being the victim of the next 



the Fall of Richard 

The form taken by the Fall of 
Richard is an alternation of sug- 
gestions of hope and despair car- 
ried on into the battle itself 



Epilogue Play: Henry the Eighth 

Alternation in Public life : the Mask 
Alternation in Individual life : the History 



The Mask 

Rise of Ann Bullen : Her meeting 
with the King 

Fall of Katherine: the Di- 
vorce Court pageant 

Rise of Ann Bullen : Her corona- 
tion as Queen 

Fall of Katherine seen in 
Vision as Exaltation of a 
Saint 

Rise of Ann Bullen : Christening 
of her babe Elizabeth 



The History 

Buckingham seen in haughty ex- 
altation 

Buckingham exhibited in his 
humiliation 

Katherine in a position of dig- 
nity and power 

Katherine in obscurity 

WoLSEY in supreme exaltation and 
security 

Wolsey fallen 

Cranmer in disgrace 

Cranmer in exaltation 



370 

THE HISTORIC PLAYS SEPARATELY 

King John 
Main Plot 

Prologue to the alternating movement of the Historic Series 

Underplot 

1. A System of 

Character Arthur : Child life as a link between 
Subactions ( Constance : Passionate Motherhood 
( Hubert : the Man of Mystery 

2. Character Development : Faulconbridge 

Relief : implicit in character of Faulconbridge 



Richard the Second 
Main Plot 

Part of the alternating movement of the Historic Series 

Underplot 

<York and Loyalty 
Aumerle and Sedition 
Relief: spectacular 

First and Second Parts of Henry the Fourth 
Main Plot 

Part of the alternating movement of the Historic Series 

Underplot of Relief 

Comic Action of Prince Henry and the FalstafF lads 



371 

Henry the Fifth 
Main Plot 

Stage of Rest in the alternating movement of the Historic Series : 

An ideal Character 

revealed in five epic stages The Council 

Heroism v. Treason 

Action 

Trouble 

Love 

Underplot 

1. Survival of the Comic Action of the FalstafF crew 

2. Reconciled factions [English, Welsh, Scotch, Irish] displayed 
in military cooperation 

3. Love making in broken French and English 
Relief : implicit in Underplot 



First Part of Henry the Sixth 
Main Plot 

Part of the alternating movement of the Historic Series 

Underplot of Germ Actions only 
Germ of Sedition [L i, iii; HL i] 

Germ of Wars of Roses [IL iv, v; IV. iv; in IV. merged in 
French War] 

Germ of Love of Margaret and Suffolk [V. iii, from 45] 
Relief : spectacular — merged in the main plot 



372 

Second Part of Henry the Sixth 
Main Plot 

Part of alternating movement of the Historic Series 

Underplot 

Germ Action of Wars of Roses [I. i, from 207; II. ii; III. i. 87 

and from 282 ; V] 



Relief Incidents 



Duchess of Gloucester and Sorcery [I. ii, iv ; II. 

i, from 165 ; II. iii, iv] 
York and Popular Judicial Combat [I. iii. init. 

and from 180 ; II. iii, 46] 
Gloucester and Popular Miracle [II. i] 



Love of Queen and Suffolk [III. ii, from 289; IV. iv] 
Enveloping Oracular Action [I. iv: all fulfilled] 



Third Part of Henry the Sixth 
Main Plot 

Part of alternating movement of the Historic Succession 

Underplot 

Germ Action of Character and Ideal Villany 

Relief: spectacular — merged in the main plot 



Richard the Third 

Main Plot and Underplot : part of the alternating movement of the 
Historic Succession. [Above, page 293] 

Relief : implicit in character of Richard 



373 

Henry the Eighth 

Mask Plot and Historic Plot : part of the alternating movement 
of the Historic Succession 

Relief : spectacular in the Mask 



INDEX OF PLAYS 



All's Well That Ends Well: plot 
scheme 345 — comments 169, 178, 
236-8, 265. 

Antony and Cleopatra : plot scheme 359 

— comments 113, 128-40, 188, 190. 

As You Like It : plot scheme 349 — com- 
ments 179, 243, 336. 

Comedy of Errors : plot scheme 339 — 
comments 169, 178, 311, 330, 334, 

334-5. 336. 

Coriolanus : plot scheme 358 — com- 
ments 113-25, 189, 332, 333. 

Cymbeline : plot scheme 351 — com- 
ments 76-88, 179, 243, 265, 267, 298, 

319. 

Ha7nlet : plot scheme 364 — comments 
191-4, 242, 265, 267, 298, 299-302, 
305-6, 308-10, 312-3, 318-22, 332, 334. 

Henry the Fourth : plot scheme 370 and 
366 — comments 279, 281-4, 33i« 
First Part : comments 15-22, 206, 
243. Second Part : comments 16, 

18, 19, 23, 200, 201, 243. 

Henry the Fifth : plot scheme 371 and 
366 — comments 13-32, 242, 243, 284, 

331- 
Henry the Sixth : comments 270, 279, 
284-5. 
First Part : plot scheme 371 and 366-7 

— comments 285-9, 298, 306. 
Second Part: plot scheme 372 and 

368 — comments 33, 289-92, 331. 
Third Part: plot scheme 372 and 
368-9 — comment 33-9, 292-3. 

Henry the Eighth : plot scheme 373 and 

369 — comments 89-105, 188, 189, 294, 
298, 306. 

John {King) : plot scheme 370 and 365 

— comments 189, 243, 270-9, 279. 
Julius Ccssar : plot scheme 357 — com- 
ments 113, 125-8, 189, 304-5, 331. 

Lear {King): ^\o\ scheme 354 — com- 
ments 8, 46-7, 141-3, 158, 188, 190-I, 
243, 265, 267, 331, 333, 335, 336, 337. 

Love's Labour' S" Lost : plot scheme 348 

— comments 179, 267-8, 330, 336. 



Macbeth: plot scheme 356 — comments 
189, 246-64, 298-9, 302, 303-4, 305, 
306-8, 336. 

Measure for Measure: plot scheme 353 

— comments 143-57, 158, 178, 211-2. 
Merchant of Venice : plot scheme 347 — 

comments 6-7, 168-9, 178-9, 210, 245-6, 

265, 3i3-7> 330- 334. 335- 
Merry Wives of Windsor : plot scheme 

343 — comments 174-5, '^77-^^ 201, 

228, 332, 335, 337. 
Midsummer-Night' s Dream : plot scheme 

342 — comments 178, 229-33, 266, 297, 

330. 336. 
Much Ado about Nothing: plot scheme 

346 — comments 178, 233-6, 243, 265-6, 

311. 333. 336. 
Othello : \)\q\. scheme 363 — comments 

188, 189, 238-41, 265, 330. 
Richard the Second: plot scheme 370 

and 366 — comments 15, 17, 18, 188, 

188-9, 280-1. 
Richard the Third: plot scheme 372 

and 369 — comments 39-45, 188, 190, 

265, 267, 293-4, 303. 
Romeo and yuliet : plot scheme 360 — 

comments 46-64, 188, 190, 265, 323, 

334, 336. 
Taming of the Shrew : plot scheme 344 — 

comments 177, 212-21, 333. 
Tempest: plot scheme 352 — comments 

179, 297, 322-6. 
Timon of Athens : plot scheme 355 — 

comments 189, 331, 334. 
Titus Andronicus : plot scheme 361 — 

comment 189. 
Troilus and Cressida : plot scheme 362 

— comments 331, 335. 

Twelfth Night : plot scheme 340 — com-^ 
ments 170-4, 178, 228-9, 33i. 334. 337- 

Two Gentlernen of Verona : plot scheme 
341 — comments 180-4, 222-8, 311, 331, 

332. 334. 337. 
Winter's Tale: plot scheme 350 — com- 
ments 65-76, 179, 298, 306, 331-2, 
337. 



375 



GENERAL INDEX 



Abandon as a dramatic tone 176, 341. 

Accident, moral and physical discrimi- 
nated: 50 and Chapter III, 311 and 
Chapter XV — negative aspect, in re- 
lation to connection of character and 
fate: 50, 317 — positive aspect, asso- 
ciated with providence: 317-26, 87 — 
illustrations : Romeo a?id yuliet 50 and 
Chapter III, 360; Merchant 313-7; 
Hamlet 319-21; various 311-2. 

Comedies of Accident 347 — Trag- 
edies of Accident 364. 

Action, as the unit of plot: 330-4 — 
simple and complicated 330 — varieties 
of 330-3 — subactions 333 — circum- 
stances substituted for actions 334 — 
compounding of actions into lots 

334-7- 

Alternation an element in Shake- 
spearean conception of history 270, 
295-6 — traced in succession of plays 
270-96, 365-9. 

Ancient v. modern thought as to com- 
munity and individual 111-3. 

Antimask 89. 

Arch as a type of dramatic form 76, 331, 
350-2. 

Aristophanes 160. 

Aristotle 5-6, 10, 161, 329. 

Atmosphere, as an extension of dra- 
matic tone : 179-84 [compare 336-7] 
— illustrations: Winter's Tale 71-3, 
179, 350 ; Two Gentlejnen 180-4, 34^ I 
various 55, 179-80, 342, 348-51. 

Balance, Moral, or Heroism : 11, 13 and 
Chapter I — balance of tones 177-8. 

Ballad dance 159. 

Being and Doing, antithesis of: 91. 

Ben Jonson 89, 196. 

Biblical religion, alleged effect on dra- 
matic conceptions : 47. 



Captives, Play of: 163-4. 

Caricatixre as a dramatic tone 160, 163, 
176, 177-8, 343. 

Centre, dramatic [central personages, 
etc.] : 76, 84, 351, 352, 362, 363, 366. 

Character, relation to fate: 7, 46-51 — 
character action 331, 370 — comedies 
of 344-7 — contrast 355-7. 370 — de- 
velopment 14-23, 33-9, 370 — ideal 
character 371 [compare Chapter I] 

— tragedies of 355-9, 364- 
Chorus 159, 161. 
Chronicle histories, 185. 
Circumstance as an element of plot 334, 

339-41. 364- 

Circumstances, sway of, as one of the 
forces of life : 264-8 [compare 62-4J — 
its dramatic expression in the Envelop- 
ing Action 264-8. 

Clash and disentanglement 170-6, 339- 
40, 342-3, 347, 362. 

Classification of Shakespearean plays 
185. 

Climax, dramatic : 76, 343, 352. 

Clouds, Play of: 161. 

Clown 189-94, 340, 345, 349, 363. 

Comedy : as life in equilibrium 109, 158 
and Chapter VIII — primitive 159-60 

— Old Attic 160-2, 176 — Roman 162-4 

— Classical 164 — of Situation 164 — 
changes of, in Dark Ages 164-6. 
Shakespearean conception founded 
on union of drama and romance 166-7 

— story raised to its highest power 
167-76 — harmony of tones 177-84 — 
as life in equilibrium 184— the con- 
verse of Shakespearean tragedy 194. 

Comedies of Accident 347 — of Char- 
acter 344-7 — of Convention 348-9 

— of Enchantment 342, 352 — of Fall 
and Restoration 350-1 — of Intrigue, 
343-6- 



376 



GENERAL INDEX 



377 



Community and individual, antithesis 
of: III and Chapter VI — ancient and. 
modern conceptions distinguished iii- 
2 — a view point for the Roman plays 
113 — in Coriolanus appears as princi- 
ple and compromise 113-25 — in 
Julius Ccesar evenly balanced 125-8 

— in Antony and Cleopatra appears 
as public and private life of Antony 
128-40. 

Complexity, moral, in the Shakespearean 

world : 109 and Book II. 
Complexity and Harmony, in Measure 

for Measure : 143-57. 
Complicating action 332. 
Complication and resolution : 162-3, 330 

— an element of Shakespearean com- 
edy 169-76 — illustrations : Twelfth 
Night 170-4 ; Merry Wives 174-5 '> 
various 169-70. 

Compliment as an element of the mask 

89, 92, 105. 
Compromise v. principle in Coriolanus 

114-25. 
Comus 159. 
Contrast as an element of plot interest 

334- 
Convention, comedies of, 348-9. 
Counteraction, 333, 358, 361. 
Court Fool 142 : see Clown. 
Cross Actions, 345, 358-61. 

Dark Ages, 164-5. 
Deformity of Richard 33-4. 
Dependent Underplot 336, 344, 347, 359. 
Destiny in Greek drama 47 — in Shake- 
speare 62-4, 302, 309. 
Doing and Being, antithesis of: 91. 

Enchantment, comedies of, 342, 352. 

Enveloping action : dramatic expression 
of environment as one of the forces of 
life 264-5 — as an element of plot 264- 
5 — its connection with the history 
drama 268-9 — illustrations : Much 
Ado 'z(i'-y\ Midsummer-Night 266; 
Love's Labours Lost 267; various 41, 
265-8, 342, 345-9, 351-64. 

Environment in application to Shake- 
speare's Moral System : 242, 264-8 — 



circumstances as immediate environ- 
ment 264-8 — historical environment 
269 and Chapter XIII — supernatural 
environment 297 and Chapter XIV — 
overruling providence 311 and Chap- 
ter XV. 

Epic form 359, 371. 

Equilibrium: Life in, as comedy 109 — 
overthrown, as tragedy 109 — unstable, 
as a moral problem in Lear 141-3. 

Error as a dramatic term 169, 339, 340. 

Ethics . relation of Shakespeare to : 7 — 
institutional 144. 

Experiment in morals {Measure for 
Measure) : 148-56. 

Experimental side of philosophy, as fic- 
tion : 2, 141. 



Fall and Restoration, Comedies of: 

350-I- 

Fall and Rise : as a form of movement 
355 — in the life without and the life 
within : 91-2 — illustrations : Henry 
the Eighth 91-107; Antony and Cleo- 
Mtra 132-5. 

FaRacy of Quotations 4, 9. 

Falstaff 174-5, 19s - 199. 200, 203-6. 

Fancy as a dramatic tone 176. 

Farce as a dramatic tone 346. 

Fatalism distinguished from historic 
alternation 296. 

Fate in relation to character 7. 

Feud of Jew and Christian 313-5, 347 
— of Montagues and Capulets 360 
[compare Chapter III passivi]. 

Fiction as the experimental side of phi- 
losophy 2-3. 

Fool 142, 189-94, 205, 354-5. [See Clown.] 

Forces of life in Shakespeare's phi- 
losophy 10, 207 and Book III — of 
restoration in Winter's Tale and Cym- 
beline 84. 

Foreshadowing, dramatic : 62-4. 

Fun as a dramatic tone 176. 

Gay Science 180, 341. 
Generating Action 333, 345, 354. 
Germ Action 334, 371-2. 
Ghost scenes as dramatic relief 193. 



378 



GENERAL INDEX 



Ghosts, Shakespeare's treatment of: 
298-310. 

Graded folly 171, 340 — tone 196-8 — 
wrong 'J'] [compare 351], 319-21 [com- 
pare 364]. 

Heredity in application to Shakespeare's 

philosophy 242-64. 
Heroic tragedy 362. 
Heroism as a root idea in Shakespeare's 

philosophy 11 and Chapter I. 
Historic movement as one of the forces 

in Shakespeare's philosophy 270, 294-6 

— historic succession of plays 269-96, 

365-73- 
History as a class of drama 185, 268 and 

Chapter XIII — pendulum of 269 and 

Chapter XIII. 
Histrionic passion as relief in drama 

193. 364. 
Horror, tragedy of : 361. 
Humour, moral significance of: 195 and 

Chapter X — the word ' humour ' 195-6 

— as a technical term of drama 196-8 
its various applications in life and in 
drama 199-206 — an element in char- 
acter 199 — as comic conscience 199 

— as suspension of moral law 199-201 
— in relation to ways of human nature 
201 — application to vice 201-3 — es- 
sential to a censor of morals 202 — 
humour and wit 204-6 [compare 196] 

— relation to the Jester 205. 
Hysteria in relation to the Jester and to 

madness 190-4 — as relief in tragedy 
193, 364 — as tone-clash 197-8 — puns 
as verbal hysterics 198. 

Individual and community, antithesis 
of : 1 1 1 and Chapter VI — ancient and 
modern conceptions distinguished 
111-3 — a view point for the Roman 
plays 113 — in Coriolanus appears as 
compromise and principle 113-25 — in 
Julius Ccesar evenly balanced 125-8 — 
in Antony and Cleopatra appears as 
private and public life of Antony 
128-40. 

Individual and law, antithesis of, in 
Measure for Measure : 143-57. 



Inner and Outer: in and Chapter VL 

[See Life Without.] 
Innocence and pathos as a root idea in 

Shakespeare's philosophy 11, 46-51 

— illustration : Rotneo and Juliet 
51-64. 

Institutional Ethics 144. 

Interlude 185-6. 

Interweaving of plots 168, 335 [com- 
pare 334-8]. 

Intrigue as a dramatic expression of 
personal will ; 209 and Chapter XI — 
relation between intrigue and irony 
210-2 — illustrations : Taming of Shrew 
212-21; Iwo Gentlemen 2-21-^ \ various 
210, 211, 228-41, 340-1, 343-6, 363, 
[compare 85]. 

Comedies of Intrigue 343-6 — Trag- 
edies of Intrigue 363. 

Irony associated with Intrigue as a 
dramatic expression of personal will 
211-2 [see above Intrigue] — other 
illustrations : 42, 74, 82-3, 346 — irony 
of fate and of circumstances distin- 
guished 241 [compare 62-4]. 

Jealousy, types of, distinguished : 66. 

Jester 189-94. [See Clown.] 

Job, Book of, its bearing on connection 

of Character and Fate : 48-9. 
Justice and Policy, in Julius Ccesar : 

127-8. 

Laboratory, moral, the theatre as : 141. 
Law and individual, antithesis of, in 

Measure for Measure : 143-57. 
Liberty, ancient and modern conceptions 

of: 112 [compare 128]. 
Life, types of, in Measure for Measure: 

143-57- 
Life Without and Life Within, The : 11, 
89 and Chapter V — one of the root 
ideas in Shakespeare's moral system 
90-2, 106-7 — as Doing and Being 91 

— as law and individual 143 — in rela- 
tion to differences between ancient 
and modem thought 111-3 — illustra- 
tions: Henry the Eighth 90-107, 294; 
Coriolanus 113-25, 358; Julius CcBsar 
125-8, 357 ; Antony and Cleopatra 128- 
40, 359 ; various 143, 321-2, 355-9, 364. 



GENERAL INDEX 



379 



Link actions, personages, etc. : 333, 353- 

5. 362. 
Love, Tragedies of: 362. 
Ludicrous as a dramatic tone 176. 
Lynch mercy (in Escalus) 148. 

Madness in relation to the Fool 190 — to 
Hamlet 191-4 — trio of madness in 
Lear 191. 

Mask 87-8, 89 and Chapter V, 352, 369, 

373- 

Mediaeval drama, its influence on Ro- 
mantic drama 185-6. 

Mercy as the solution in Measure for 
Measure 156-7. 

Minstrels 165. 

Miracle Play 185-6. 

Mirror for Magistrates, The : 166, 187. 

Modern v. ancient thought as to com- 
munity and individual 11 1-3. 

Momentum of character, as one of the 
forces of life in Shakespeare's moral 
system : 242-64 — illustrations : Mer- 
chant of Venice 245-6 — Macbeth 246- 
64. 

Moral Philosophy, how dramatically 
presented : i-io. 

Moral Problems dramatised 109, 141 and 
Chapter VII — Lear 141-3 — Measure 
for Measure 143-57 — Merchant of 
Venice 347. 

Morality play 185-6. 

Mystery play 185-6. 

Nature as a force of restoration 85-6. 

Nemesis : not an invariable principle of 
providence 46 — in character (hu- 
mour) 199 — nemesis action 331 — 
illustrations : Richard the Third 42-5, 
369; Coriolanus 124-5, 358; Antony 
and Cleopatra 136-43, 359 ; Lear 141- 
2, 354; various 343, 347, 353, 355-7, 
363-4- 

Night Scene in Richard the Third 43-4. 

Omen : philosophy of, 317-8 — in Shake- 
speare 298, 303-5 [compare 62-4]. 

Oracle and Oracular action: 65, 69-71, 
76, 87-8, 332, 3SO-I, 356, 362, 372. 



Outer and Inner: iii and Chapter VI. 
[See Life Without.] 

Overruling providence: 318-26 — illus- 
trations : Cymbeline 87-8 ; Hamlet 318- 
22 ; Tempest 322-6. 

Pageant 89. 

Paradox : as a dramatic interest akin to 
irony 212 — illustrations: Taming of 
Shrew 212-6, 222, 344; Much Ado 
235-6, 346. 

Parallelism as an element of plot beauty 
334-8 passim. 

Parasite 163, 164. 

Passion and purity, antithesis of, in 
Measure for Measure : 143-57. 

Pastoral as a dramatic tone 71-3, 349, 35a 

Pathology, moral, dramatised in humour 
202. 

Pathos II, 46-51, 51-64, 124-S, 136-40, 
319-22, 357, 364. 

Patrician party in Coriolanus 114-23. 

Patriotism, ancient and modern con- 
ceptions of: 121, 123-4. 

Pendulum: of history 269 and Chapter 
XIII — of retribution 41. 

Personality as one of the forces of life 
in Shakespeare's philosophy 209 and 
Chapter XI — expressed in Intrigue 
and Irony 209-12. 

Plautus 163, 169. 

Plebeian party in Coriolanus 114-23. 

Plot in Shakespeare : 5-7, 329 and Apj- 
pendix — general conception of plot 5, 
329. 337-8 [compare 5-7, 41, 50-1, 
61, 65, 70, 73, 76, 83, 106, 122, 153, 
156, 237, 264, 302] — difference of 
Greek and Shakespearean or Classi- 
cal and Romantic 329 [compare 168] 

— unit of plot or action 330-4 — com- 
pounding of actions into plots 334-7 

— representation of plot in geomet- 
rical design 331-2 — plot schemes for 
Shakespearean plays 339-73. 

Plutarch 185. 

Poetry: relation of, to philosophy 2-3 

— to scientific experiment 2. 

Policy and Justice, in Julius CcBsar: 

127-8. 
Premature Methodisation : 8. 



380 



GENERAL INDEX 



Principle v. compromise in Coriolanus 

114-25. 

Problems, Moral, dramatised: 109, 141 
and Chapter VI I — Lear x^^x--^ — Meas- 
ure for Measure 143-57 — Merchant 
of Venice 347. 

Providence in relation to plot: 5, 41, 
43-5, 47-51 [compare Chapter III 
passini\, 65, 106, 241, 295, 297 — over- 
ruling providence as one of the forces 
in Shakespeare's moral system 318-26 
— illustrations: Cymbeline 87-8, 351; 
Hamlet 318-22; Tempest 322-6. 

Psychology, relation of Shakespeare 
to: 3. 

Puns as verbal hysterics 198. 

Purity and passion, antithesis of, in 
Measure for Measure : 143-57. 

Quotations, Fallacy of: 4, 9. 

Redemption as a poetic ideal 65, 76. 

Relief in tragedy 188-94 — in relation to 
plot 336-7 — illustrations : Lear 190-1 ; 
Hamlet 191-4 ; various 188-90 [com- 
pare 354-64] — relief in comedy 336-7 
[compare 339-53]. 

Renaissance 166-7. 

Resolution (of complication) : 162-3. 

Restoration : wrong and, as one of the 
root ideas of Shakespeare's philoso- 
phy: II, 65-88 — spirit of, in Winter's 
Tale 71-6 — forces of, in Whiter s Tale 
and Cymbeline 84-8 — universal 352. 

Retribution: a fundamental idea in 
morals 40 — its relation to plot 40-5 — 
not an invariable principle of provi- 
dence 46 and Chapter III passim — 
wrong and retribution as one of the 
root ideas in Shakespeare's philosophy 
II, 33 and Chapter II. 

Rise and Fall, as a form of movement : 
355. 356. 369 — in the life without and 
the life within : 91-2 — illustrations : 
Henry the Eighth 91-107 ; Antony and 
Cleopatra 132-5. 

Romance, influence of: 165-7. 

Romantic drama 6, 166-7, 185-6. 

Root ideas of Shakespeare's philosophy : 
II and Book I — heroism and moral 



balance 13 and Chapter I — wrong 
and retribution 33 and Chapter II — 
innocence and pathos 46 and Chapter 
III — wrong and restoration 65 and 
Chapter IV — the life without and the 
life within 89 and Chapter V — all 
harmonised in the last 106-7. 

Roses, wars of: 41, 279, 292-4, 368-9. 

Rustic atmosphere in Winter's Tale: 
71-3- 

Sackville 189. 

Satire as a dramatic tone 160, 176. 

Saucy slave (or servant) 163, 339, 341, 

344- 

Scale: of tones 176-7 — of wrong 77, 
319, 351, 364. 

Serious tone 176. 

Sharper 163. 

Siddons, Mrs., on responsibility of Mac- 
beth : 247 note. 

Simplicity, rustic, in Winter's Tale: 

71-3. 
Situation : comedies of 339-42 [compare 

164] — tragedies of 363. 
Sixfold structure 65, 70-1, 76, 84. 
Spectacle, the drama a: 10, 145, 176, 

197, 309-10, 316. 
Spectacular relief 188-9, 370-3. 
Stage-directions in relation to questions 

of the Supernatural : 299-302, 260. 
State, ancient and modern conceptions 

of: 111-2. 
Stationary action 332, 364. 
Story : interest of 162-76 — harmony of 

stories 168-9. 
Subaction 333, 336, 343, 345-6, 354, 

35^. 370- 

Supernatural, The, as one of the forces 
of life in Shakespeare's philosophy : 
297 and Chapter XIV — dramatisa- 
tion of, in Midsummer-Night and 
Tempest 297-8 — reality of, in other 
Shakespearean dramas 298-302 — 
function of, in Shakespearean plot 
302-10. 

Sway of circumstances 268 [compare 
264-8] . 

Symmetry as an element of dramatic 
interest 84, 329, 334-6, 337-8. 



C 12 6 



GENERAL INDEX 



381 



Tetralogies n, 33. 

Theatre as moral laboratory 141 and 
Chapter VII. 

Tone, dramatic: 10, 197-8 — analysis of 
196-8 [compare 176-7] — mixture of 
tones 197 [compare 162, 176] — tone- 
clash 197-8 — tone-tremulousness or 
humour 178 — harmony of tones as 
an element in Shakespearean comedy 
178-84 — relief tones in tragedy 188-94. 

Tragedy : as equilibrium overthrown 
109, 184, 185 and Chapter IX — Greek 
conception of tragedy 186 [compare 
160] — modification under romance 
influence 187 [compare 166] — speciali- 
sation to the idea of fallen greatness 
187 — use of relief 188-94 — the con- 
verse of comedy 194. 

Problem Tragedy 354— Tragedies 
of Character 355-9, 364 — of Nemesis 
356-9, 364 — of Pathos 358-60 — of 
Horror 361 — Heroic 362 — Love 362 

— of Situation 363 — of Intrigue 363 

— of Accident 364. 
Tragic tone 176. 
Turning-points 265, 270-9. 

Underplot : 336 [compare 163] — illus- 
trations : Richard the Third 41 ; 
Twelfth Night 171 ; Lear 336 ; various 



340-1, 343-4, 346-7, 350, 352-3,355. 
358-9, 362, 364, 370-1, 372. 
Unstable equilibrium as a moral problem 
in Lear 141-3. 

Vice as an institution in Measure for 
Measure 143-5 — ^s a spectacle 201-4. 
Villany, ideal : 39-45. 

Weird humour as relief 193. 

Will, personal, as one of the forces of 
life in Shakespeare's philosophy: 209 
and Chapter XI — its dramatic ex- 
pression in Intrigue and Irony 209 and 
Chapter XI — restraints on 209 — he- 
redity 242-3 — character 243-4 — envi- 
ronment 242, 264-8 [compare 297 and 
Chapter XIV], 311, 326 and Chapter 
XV. 

Wit as a dramatic tone 176. 

Witches in Macbeth: ^(jZ-^io passim. 

Wrong and Restoration, as one of the 
root ideas in Shakespeare's philoso- 
phy : II, 65-88 — illustrations : Winter's 
Tale 65-76 ; Cymbeline 76-88. 

Wrong and Retribution, as one of the 
root ideas in Shakespeare's philosophy: 
II, 33 and Chapter II. 

Wrong, graded : 77 [compare 351], 319- 
21 [compare 364]. 



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